Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

DEATH OF A MEMBER

Mr. Speaker: I regret to have to inform the House of the death of Stephen Owen Davies, esquire, Member for Merthyr Tydvil, and I desire, on behalf of the House, to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the honourable Member.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND INDUSTRY

Coal Industry Dispute

Mr. Lane: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a further statement on the effect of the coal miners' strike and

picketing on electricity supplies and industrial activity.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. John Davies): In accordance with last Thursday's statement by my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry, the directions prohibiting the use of electricity by industry on three weekdays and on Sundays were revoked with effect from midnight last night. Industry, however, like other consumers, is still subject to rota disconnections and I hope it will be possible for a further statement on the future of these and other restrictions to be made before the end of this week.—[Vol. 831, c. 1505.]

Mr. Lane: Is it not clear that inconvenience to the community has been minimised by the superb work of those engaged in electricity supply and by the adaptability of industry generally? Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Government's decision to give priority to industry during this recovery period is widely accepted by the public?

Mr. Davies: Yes, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I would add that the work which has been done in shifting coal from pithead sites to the generating industry has also been a remarkable achievement. The reasons for deciding to stress the earliest possible return to work by industry, even in preference to the interests of household consumers are well known to the House.

Mr. Skinner: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that even while picketing was


in progress, conversions were taking place at four power stations in the North and that equipment was being smuggled in to allow conversion to oil? [An HON. MEMBER: "Quite right, too."] I understand the hon. Member's feelings. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, if it is not made abundantly clear by the Government and the C.E.G.B. together that this oil conversion is of a temporary and not of a permanent nature, further picketing will take place and there will be further trouble for the Secretary of State and for the Government?

An Hon. Member: Disgraceful.

Mr. Davies: No; all those proposals are entirely wide of the mark. There is a later Question on this matter on the Order paper.

Motor Vehicles

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the proportion of United Kingdom vehicle production exported, the level of tariff protection given to the United Kingdom motor car industry, and the proportion of the United Kingdom domestic motor car market supplied by imported vehicles, in the latest year for which statistics are available; and what information he has from international sources concerning the corresponding figures for the Federal German Republic.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): In 1970, the latest year for which we have corresponding figures, cars exported from the United Kingdom and the Federal German Republic represented 42 per cent. and 55 per cent. of production; the import penetrations were 14 per cent. and 22 per cent. respectively. From 1st January, 1972, the tariff in both countries has been 11 per cent.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for confirming that the German motor car industry enjoys both a higher level of exports than the British motor car industry and also greater penetration of its markets by foreign cars. Is there not a moral for us in this country, in particular at a time when trade union leaders in the industry seem to be behaving as if international competition was not a factor to be considered? Will my hon. Friend look again at the

proposals, which were announced last year by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for unilateral tariff cuts in advance of our entry into the Common Market?

Mr. Grant: I agree with my hon. Friend that the motor car industry has to be internationally competitive; indeed, we are all in agreement about that. It is possible that unilateral tariffs cuts might be desirable in some circumstances. However, I do not think this would be appropriate at the present time.

Mr. Ewing: Will the hon. Gentleman caution his hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) that, having failed in his attempts to incite the miners in their dispute, he should not now attempt to incite the car workers at Bathgate when the position there is delicately poised and when interference of this kind is undesirable and could lead to aggravation of the situation?

Mr. Grant: I do not think it is for me to say anything of the sort to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Benn: Would the hon. Gentleman clearly confirm that the Government have no intention of making unilateral tariff cuts on imported motor cars along the lines announced by the Secretary of State last year?

Mr. Grant: The right hon. Gentleman has not been paying attention to what I said, and for his benefit I will repeat it. I said that unilateral tariff cuts might be desirable in some circumstances but I do not think this would be appropriate at present.

Small Firms (Advisory Bureaux)

Mr. Tom Boardman: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he hopes to come to a decision about the Bolton Committee recommendation for setting up a chain of advisory bureaux to help small firms.

Mr. David Mitchell: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he has concluded his consideration of the proposal in the Bolton Report on small firms, that there should be a number of small firms advisory bureaux set up in key commercial centres; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Anthony Grant: We hope to reach decisions by the summer on as many as possible of the Bolton Report's recommendations including the proposal for a network of advisory bueaux. A statement will be made in due course.

Mr. Boardman: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that amongst the many excellent recommendations in the Bolton Report this one has given rise to most doubt? Will he consider whether the functions of the proposed bureaux might more effectively be carried out in the private sector by professional organisations, banks, chambers of commerce and the like?

Mr. Grant: We will certainly take into consideration what my hon. Friend has said. We are consulting a wide range of organisations, including trade associations, chambers of commerce, other Departments and many institutions dealing with small firms, as well as small firms themselves. We will take all these views into consideration before reaching a decision.

Mr. Mitchell: Will my hon. Friend add the Secretary of State for Employment to the list of those with whom he will consult to consider whether this service might best be provided through the new training initiative which is about to be undertaken by that Department, because it would appear to fall within the scope of management training and, therefore, to fit into that sphere?

Mr. Grant: Will well certainly consult my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment on this matter.

Mr. Fred Evans: Does the Under-Secretary realise that the setting up of a chain of advisory bureaux is of little use unless there is somewhere to channel the advice? Does he also realise that in regions, particularly like Wales, which depend on small to medium-sized firms, the withdrawal of the former range of regional incentives is the very thing which is preventing encouragement to go into those regions? Will he, as quickly as possible, announce any new policies which the Government may envisage—we have heard some whispers—about a change in regional policies?

Mr. Grant: That point does not arise from the original Question. There is

another Question on the Order Paper on that subject. There are many small firms in Wales and the Bolton Committee took them into consideration in its recommendations.

Travel Trade (Arbitration Scheme)

Mr. Milne: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will examine the recent proposals, a copy of which has been sent to him, presented by the Association of British Travel Agents to its member firms in the travel trade in regard to the association's plans for an independent arbitration scheme to deal with complaints from holidaymakers and the travelling public; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Anthony Grant: I welcome arrangements which help to resolve difficulties between holidaymakers and tour operators. It is too early to judge how effective this scheme will be in practice.

Mr. Milne: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we share his interest in this matter—indeed, it would be difficult not to do so—because we forwarded the idea of this scheme to the Association of British Travel Agents four years ago? Does he realise that it will be necessary to have talks with the travel trade about the exclusion clauses in its agreements with the holidaymaking public in order to make a real success of a scheme of this kind?

Mr. Grant: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's interest in and, indeed, considerable knowledge of this matter. I am sure that what he has said will be taken into careful consideration. The scheme has only just been announced and we must see how it works. However, I congratulate the industry on a commendable and responsible initative.

Mr. McCrindle: While welcoming the initiative of the association, may I ask whether my hon. Friend is aware that it is being suggested that this year again we are liable to have the situation which came to our notice last year of hotels not being ready for holidaymakers who had booked many months previously on the basis of an artist's impression? Is it not vital, if the good image of the travel trade is to be preserved, that the A.B.T.A. and others do their best to eliminate this extreme irritant to the public?

Mr. Grant: I agree that the practice to which my hon. Friend refers is deplorable. I believe that the A.B.T.A. has this matter very much in mind and is anxious that as many of its members as possible should participate in the scheme.

Electricity Supply (Fuel Stocks)

Mr. Rost: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what arrangements he is making to ensure that Central Electricity Generating Board power stations become adequately supplied with reserve stocks of all essential materials required to maintain full production for a long enough period to meet any future emergencies.

The Minister for Industry (Sir John Eden): I am satisfied that the C.E.G.B. is making every endeavour to rebuild its stocks of all essential materials.

Mr. Rost: While welcoming that reply, may I ask whether my hon. Friend agrees that the recent illegal picketing of some of our power stations has revealed a weakness in our national security? Will the Government ensure that, in the national interest, all power stations are now adequately stocked with the necessary materials, including alternative sources of fuel, to insure against any prolonged disruption of supplies of materials to those power stations?

Sir J. Eden: Questions about the law on picketing are for my right hon. Friends more directly concerned with these matters. I am certain that in its contingency plans we can expect the C.E.G.B. to take account of its recent experiences.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Will the Minister arrange, within the next 12 hours, for an investigation into what is taking place at Agecroft power station, the second biggest in the North West, on the fringe of my constituency? Is he aware that I went there yesterday with two of my constituents who are employed there who showed me that, despite ample supplies of coal and fuel, that power station has not worked for two days, that these men allege that the C.E.G.B. is making more

serious cuts than are necessary and that they think this is because it wishes to discredit the miners?

Sir J. Eden: I completely rebut the more general accusations which the hon. Gentleman has made. Coal stocks are extremely tight at present—

Mr. Allaun: Not there.

Sir J. Eden: —and fully justify a retention of the restrictive measures.

Mr. Allaun: I have seen them.

Sir J. Eden: The hon. Gentleman asked me about a particular power station. I will certainly look into the point that he raised. However, I assure him that every possible endeavour is being made by the electricity supply industry to ensure the speediest possible return to normality.

Sir G. Nabarro: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that hon. Members in all parts of the House are most anxious to penetrate the mind of my right hon. Friend with regard to future policy for fuel supplies at generating stations, the extent to which we are now embarked on dual firing, coal-oil or oil or coal or nuclear, and what is to be the balance between these fuels in future? Could we not have a White Paper setting out all these important details?

Sir J. Eden: My hon. Friend has a later Question about that matter on the Order Paper. Fuel policy implications from what we have just been through are under urgent consideration.

Mr. Harold Lever: Would not the Minister be wiser, when questioned about a specific case by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun), to assure the House that he will look into it before denying as confidently as he does that there is any cause for complaint? Secondly, will he seek to discourage the more belligerent of his hon. Friends—

Sir G. Nabarro: I am not belligerent.

Mr. Lever: I was not referring to the question by the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro)—at a time when we should be trying to bind


up the wounds caused by the strike and to restore good relations between management and men, from provocative and aggressive remarks of the kind which have been featured this afternoon?

Sir J. Eden: The hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) asked two questions. One was of a generalised nature making sweeping allegations which were wholly without foundation. The other related to a particular situation which I said I would look into.

Mr. Cronin: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the adequacy of coal stocks for power stations.

Mr. John Davies: Deliveries of coal to power stations are increasing daily and restrictions on consumption of electricity are being relaxed as quickly as the generating position permits. In this situation the stock position is subject to fluctuation but it should permit the fairly early resumption of normal supplies of electricity.

Mr. Cronin: In view of their inexcusable errors of judgment, both during and before the coal strike, which have caused total disruption of industry and prolonged public inconvenience, should not the right hon. Gentleman and, more particularly, his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment give serious consideration to resigning?

Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman's premise is incorrect and the conclusion entirely inconsequent.

Mr. William Clark: Would my right hon. Friend agree that it has always been the law that when goods are sold the purchaser should have the free use of and the right to use those goods? Would he further agree that the action in previous weeks of picketing goods which did not belong to the National Coal Board was a violation of the law?

Hon. Members: Rubbish.

Mr. Davies: The whole matter of the laws affecting picketing, as my right hon. Friend has said, now needs to be seen in the light of the recent events. It is

undesirable at this point for me to try to comment on the questions to which my hon. Friend has referred.

Mr. Palmer: Would the right hon. Gentleman agree that as the flow of coal into power stations over the last three or four days has exceeded the consumption of coal, stocks are building up and, therefore, apart from peak load times, should there not be an early relaxation of the present hardship being suffered by the public?

Mr. Davies: No, the assumption made by the hon. Gentleman is incorrect, Stocks are still being marginally drawn down despite the deliveries of coal. But the C.E.G.B. has recently indicated that it hopes to be back to normal output within 10 to 14 days.

Machine Tools

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what companies are currently in receipt of aid from his Department to promote machine tool development projects; and how much they are receiving.

Sir J. Eden: In the current financial year 21 companies are getting support amounting to £445,000. I will circulate details in the OFFICIAL REPORT. Also four companies are receiving a total of £375.000 this year under contracts from the N.R.D.C.

Mr. Huckfield: Is the Minister aware that, though I am grateful that at last I have been able to get some kind of information like that, there is a great deal of concern among the workers in the industry that much of this money is spent on imported machine tools? Will the hon. Gentleman now give us an idea of the percentage of this money from the Government which is spent on imported machine tools and say whether his Department has any new initiative for the machine tool industry?

Sir J. Eden: If I can identify, in the detailed form the hon. Gentleman requires, the kind of information for which he has asked, I will certainly let him have it.

Following in the information:


COMPANIES RECEIVING SUPPORT FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY FOR MACHINE TOOL PROJECTS


Company
Item
Total Contracts Value £'000
Total Payments Expected 1971–72 £'000


Abwood Machine Tools Ltd.
…
Electrolytic Grinder
27·6
0·7


Bishop Eaves
…
Workmaster Lathe
51·4
23·6


Broadbent-Schofield Ltd.
…
Automatic Lathes
52·0
15·6


Butler Machine Tool Co. Ltd.
…
Plano Milling Machine
75·9
—


Cambridge Vacuum
…
Electron Beam Welder
80·8
0·7


Churchill Redman
…
Automatic Lathe
139·8
39·1


Churchill Redman
…
P.5 Lathe
172·8
0·2


Churchill Vero Machine Tools Ltd.
…
Machining Centre
82·9
—


English Electric-A.E.I. Turbine Generators Ltd.
Petro-Forge Process
13·8
3·3


Ferranti Ltd.
…
Drawing and Measuring Machine
93·5
—


J. Goulder and Sons Ltd.
…
Gear Testing Machine
29·6
0·7


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd
…
2M Robot Lathe (Programme-sequenced)
192·6
2·0


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
3M Robot Lathe (Programme-sequenced)
111·0
1·9


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
Automatic Capstan Lathe
44·6
0·1


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
No. 3 Programmed Automatic Lathe
294·9
1·9


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
No. 4 Programmed Automatic Lathe
192·5
5·6


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
Vertical Automatic Lathe
240·4
9·6


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
Machining Centre
152·5
49·6


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
Turning Centre
204·3
62·2


Herbert B.S.A. Ltd.
…
Electro-Chemical Deburring Machine
18·9
5·8


Jones and Shipman
…
Cylindrical Grinding Machine
46·6
0·6


Jones and Shipman
…
Surface Grinding Machine
32·6
0·3


Jones and Shipman
…
Grinding Machine
19·3
0·2


Marwin Machine Tools Ltd.
…
Machining Centre
322·0
18·3


Massey Ltd.
…
Hydrostamp Press
242·0
2·2


Newall Eng. Co. Ltd.
…
High Speed Grinding Machine
144·2
76·1


Redman Eng. Co. Ltd.
…
Pre-forming "Use-Making" Machine
24·7
1·4


F. E. Rowland and Co. Ltd.
…
Friction Welding Machine
19·6
—


Thos. Ryder and Son Ltd.
…
Transfer Line Units
596·7
52·7


Van Moppes
…
Profile Grinding Machine
6·7
1·7


Wadkin Ltd.
…
Die-formed End-jointing Machine for Timber.
9·1
2·9


Wickman Machine Tool Sales Ltd.
…
Single-spingle Chucking Automatic Lathe.
48·9
18·9


Wickman Machine Tool Sales Ltd.
…
12 inch Chucking Programmed Lathe
35·2
11·6


Wickman Machine Tool Sales Ltd.
…
24 inch Chucking Programmed Lathe
50·6
31·9


Wickman Machine Tool Sales Ltd.
…
Internal Grinding Machine
43·4
3·5



…
TOTAL
3,913·4
444·9

Power Stations (Oil Cost)

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what has been the cost of oil per ton purchased by the Central Electricity Generating Board over each of this past 10 years.

Sir J. Eden: The exact price paid is a commercial matter between the C.E.G.B. and its suppliers, but some information on average prices paid by the electricity industry as a whole is available in Table 99 of the Department's Digest of Energy Statistics, 1971.

Mr. Wainwright: May I thank the Minister for not giving the information? Is he aware that the price of oil is bound to rise during the next 10 years and that because the situation in the Arab States is unstable there is a danger of oil supplies being cut off? Will the hon. Gentleman do whatever he can to rebuff the pressures from his right hon. Friend who is trying to teach the miners a lesson by changing over some coal-fired power stations to oil? Let me warn the Government that if that happens the recent incidents during the picketing will be


such as might have happened at a kindergarten, because the miners will fight tenaciously, with vigour and with strength, against any contraction of their industry.

Sir J. Eden: The hon. Gentleman should consult himself about who is making threats. The whole question of the security of supplies is important. It affects both coal and oil. But the C.E.G.B. advises me that oil is marginally cheaper than coal for base-load generation.

Mining (Respiratory Diseases)

Mr. Dormand: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he is satisfied with present progress on research on pneumoconiosis and other respiratory diseases affecting miners; and if he will make a statement.

Sir J. Eden: Obviously one cannot be satisfied until these diseases are eliminated. The most pressing problem at present is dust control and the research effort on it has recently been increased. Since the introduction of the present interim gravimetric dust standard in March, 1970, there has been a significant improvement in dust control and I hope that this will continue.

Mr. Dormand: Will the hon. Gentleman assure the House that there is no complacency in this matter? Is he aware that in its current report the National Coal Board says that the favourable trend in the number of pneumoconiosis cases diagnosed for the first time has slowed down appreciably? "Appreciably" is the board's word, not mine. That is a serious development. Will the hon. Gentleman assure us that all resources will be devoted to curing this not only crippling but killing disease?

Sir J. Eden: I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no complacency in this matter. The latest Digest of Pneumoconiosis Statistics shows that the incidence of new certifications of pneumoconiosis for the purpose of disablement benefit in 1970 was the highest for seven years, but that does not reflect current working conditions, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

North Sea Gas and Oil

Mr. Douglas: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what

estimate he has made of the total investment by companies investing in North Sea gas and oil.

Sir J. Eden: About £300 million to date. This figure covers both exploration and the cost of producing the gas and oil discovered.

Mr. Douglas: While thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether he concedes that he ought to address his mind to two matters? First, will he look at the adequacy in present circumstances, of the Continental Shelf Act, 1964, and his specific reports there-under to this House? Secondly, in view of the developments in the North Sea, will he quickly review and produce a White Paper on fuel policy?

Sir J. Eden: I shall consider the first point made by the hon. Gentleman. With regard to the second point, the whole question whether to publish a White Paper, or in what form to make observations about fuel policy, and the implications on it of recent events, is under consideration.

Mr. Edward Taylor: Is my hon. Friend aware that despite the remarkable finds of gas and oil referred to, Scottish consumers are still paying on average 25 per cent. more for gas supplies than is paid by the average consumer in England and Wales? Does my hon. Friend think that these additional supplies of natural gas might reduce the differential?

Sir J. Eden: The matter deal with in the first part of my hon. Friend's question is one for the gas board concerned. As regards the degree to which Scotland will benefit from development on the Continental Shelf, Scotland like the rest of the United Kingdom, of whose economy it forms a part, will benefit substantially.

Mr. Sheldon: Is it not a fact that the country as a whole is not likely to benefit from these reserves of gas and oil to anything like the extent that it should? Is it not also a fact that the royalty of 15 per cent. for the gas from these fields is one of the lowest in the world? What attempt is being made by the Minister to find the true costs of producing gas and oil so that when gas boards and other bodies place their orders they will be in a rather more advantageous position than they are now in assessing the price they ought to pay?

Sir J. Eden: Exploration expenditure can be anything from £500,000 to £2 million. Production and development costs vary between fields, depending on the size of field, well productivity, distance from shore and other factors. The most important thing is to ensure that resources are discovered and developed as rapidly as possible, and that is taking place now. We know that possibly oil production will amount to 25 million tons a year by the mid-1970s, possibly trebling by the early 1980s.

Bedding (Double Pricing)

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will introduce legislation to ban the practice of double-pricing of bedding, in view of the fact that this practice misleads consumers and avoids the effects of the Trade Descriptions Act, 1968.

Mr. Anthony Grant: I understand that the practice referred to involves listing goods with an unrealistically high "recommended" price, in order to exaggerate the apparent size of the discount offered by the retailer. If specific evidence were available of a particular case in which the price recommended implied a mark-up significantly greater than the range normally applied in that trade, I would certainly be prepared to consider the possibility of a prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act.

Mr. Janner: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that assurance. Will he give an assurance that if he receives information that this practice is widespread in the bedding or other industries he will institute an inquiry into a practice that is causing considerable concern in the trades concerned? Meanwhile, will he issue a warning to the public of the effects of this totally fictitious mark-down?

Mr. Grant: On the last point, the reply that I have given should indicate the concern with which the Government view the matters raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman. As to a wider inquiry, if there is any evidence of such a practice in any industry, let alone that of bedding, we shall look at it carefully having regard to the terms of the Act.

Retail Sales

Mr. Montgomery: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what

was the increase in volume of total retail sales in 1971 compared with 1970; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. John Davies: There was an increase between the two years of about ½ per cent. This comparison includes the low sales at the time of the postal strike in the first quarter of 1971, as well as the strong rate of increase since the measures announced last July. Between the second and fourth quarters the growth in volume was at an annual rate of 6 per cent.

Mr. Montgomery: Those figures are encouraging, but will my right hon. Friend impress on his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer the need to do everything possible to stimulate the economy? Will he impress on the Chancellor of the Exchequer the need also to have further reductions in both purchase tax and S.E.T. in the Budget?

Mr. Davies: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has those matters very much in mind. The economy is expanding at about the rate foreseen by my right hon. Friend at the time of his July measures.

Mr. Kaufman: As the figures given by the right hon. Gentleman are not encouraging but lamentable, will he make sure that he advises his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to base his Budget on the hard facts of the situation and not on the euphoric moonshine that is being propagated by hon. Gentlemen on the Government side?

Mr. Davies: That again is a case of somewhat immoderate language. The fact is that a 6 per cent. increase in consumer sales between the second and fourth quarters is neither moonshine nor negligible.

United States of America

Mr. Peter Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what is his estimate of the likely course of trade between the United Kingdom and the United States of America in 1972.

Mr. John Davies: Economic expansion in both countries and the settlement of exchange parities should lead to continued growth in United Kingdom exports to and imports from the United States.

Mr. Blaker: Is it not a fact that the United States is regularly in surplus on


its visible trade with this country, as with the rest of the world? Is my right hon. Friend aware that in spite of that fact there are proposals before the United States Congress in at least two Bills which would further cut down exports to the United States from the rest of the world? Does not my right hon. Friend agree that if the proposals were passed in their present form they would have an adverse effect on world trade, with consequent bad effects for everybody, including the United States?

Mr. Davies: As regards the general question of balance of trade, my hon. Friend will of course be aware that in the last year trade between the two countries was virtually in balance, with a slight margin of advantage lying with us, if anything. On the specific question, the two Bills to which he is referring are the Dent and Hartke-Burke Bills, either one of which would constitute a very grave setback to the cause of the development of world trade. For these reasons I shall be watching the progress of these Bills very attentively and will take such action as seems necessary if they seem likely to be passed.

Tinned Fruit (Weight Marking)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will take steps to ensure that all cans of tinned fruit indicate clearly the net weight of liquid and fruit, respectively.

Sir J. Eden: I accept that such a declaration would be useful to the consumer but measurement and enforcement raise serious technical problems. I am hopeful that a solution that takes account of likely developments in Europe will be found.

Mr. Hamilton: What is the use of hoping? That is no consolation to the housewife who is being continually and comprehensively deceived in these and other matters relating to other foodstuffs. The Continent deals with this problem much better than we do, since there the proportion of fruit and syrup in the tin is clearly indicated. Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that independent investigations over a whole range of tinned fruit in this country have shown that in far too many instances there is more water than food in the tin?

Sir J. Eden: I am aware that the main interest of consumers in the relationship between the total net weight and the drained weight of the contents of the can is that it gives an indication that the can has been filled to a reasonable standard. This aspect of the problem is being discussed internationally in the context of standards for new foods by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

Mr. Jeffrey Archer: Would my hon. Friend give this matter very serious consideration, as many of us on this side feel that there are legislative loopholes of which people can take advantage? Rather than have piecemeal legislation, will my hon. Friend consider a survey of the whole problem?

Sir J. Eden: I will certainly look into that latter point. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are studying this very detailed matter carefully and urgently.

Concorde

Mr. Adley: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps he is taking to ensure that those airlines which are now ready to place orders for Concorde are not being hindered from so doing through protracted negotiations by earlier option holders.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. David Price): Negotiations with the early option holders are proceeding as quickly as can be expected and are not hindering negotiations with other potential customers.

Mr. Adley: I am grateful for that assurance. Can my hon. Friend confirm that the option positions of B.A.O.C. and Air France were first set up nine years ago, since when there has been a substantial change in the situation? Is he not aware that there is a possibility that these early option holders could use delaying tactics, by having a grip on the early order positions, to prevent those who are now ready to place order immediately from so doing? Will he consider fixing a time limit under which B.O.A.C. and Air France will have a date by which, if they have not placed firm orders, airlines which have not so far done so will have a chance to do so?

Mr. Price: If an airline sought an early place in the queue, this would be


a matter for negotiation between the manufacturers and the relevant option holders. It has not arisen in this case.

Mr. Benn: Can the hon. Gentleman give a firm indication when the orders are likely to be placed and what is the latest date of entry into service for B.O.A.C. Concordes?

Mr. Price: I have no further information on the second part of the question. On the first part, the right hon. Gentleman is presumably referring to the orders of B.O.A.C. and Air France. The answer is, I hope within the next few months.

West London(Movement of Industry)

Mr. Molloy: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what action he proposes to arrest the movement of industry out of the West London area.

Mr. Anthony Grant: Although the structure of its industry is changing, West London's employment prospects generally remain good. Also, as the economy responds to the measures the Government have taken, firms should have less cause to consider closures in the area.

Mr. Molloy: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that what he has just said does not measure up to the facts and that since I put down this Question it appears that another large firm employing thousands of men is likely to leave the area? Will he please not be so complacent? This movement of firms within the West London area may be in line with the Government's policy, which is to create unemployment, but it is resisted and resented by the people who work in West London.

Mr. Grant: On the contrary, so far from it being the Government's policy, our policy is to encourage industry to areas where the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends come from, which have a much higher rate of unemployment than Ealing. The loss of jobs in manufacturing industry in West London has been offset by increased employment in the service industries.

Mr. Lipton: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the number of unemployed in London and the South-East is almost as large as it is in the whole of Scotland, and that that is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs?

Mr. Grant: The hon. Gentleman is flying in the face of reality if he supposes that the problem of unemployment in London is anything like the problem in Scotland.

Aerospace Industry(Components and Spares)

Mr. Onslow: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate he has made of the value to the United Kingdom aerospace industry of the British components and spares required during the anticipated operational life of a Lockheed 1011 aircraft as compared with those required for an A300B aircraft.

Mr. David Price: Typical values, including spares during the life of the aircraft, are about £3 million for the L1011 and about £¾ million for the A300B, at 1971 price levels. The precise figures will vary with the type of airline operation and the aircraft service life, and with individual airlines' choice of equipment.

Mr. Onslow: Does it not follow logically from that that the success of the 1011 must be a matter of much higher national priority for this country than the success of the A300B? Will my hon. Friend undertake that this simple fact is not lost sight of among any other secondary considerations which may affect the placing of an order for an airbus by B.E.A.?

Mr. Price: I am sure that the information I have given the House will satisfy my hon. Friend's criteria.

Mr. Whitehead: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that, heartening as the figures which he has given for the Lockheed 1011 are, the position of the 1011 would be much improved if the Government would now authorised the go-ahead for an updated version of the RB211 engine?

Mr. Price: The hon. Member has a subsequent Question on the Order Paper on that very subject.

Mr. Rost: Is my hon. Friend aware that if the comparison is made in terms of man hours, it is even more favourable for the RB211 in terms of employment for this country?

Mr. Price: Part of the basic difference is that the 1011 is a larger aircraft. We also have the engine content where the replacement opportunities are far greater than in the case of the A300B wings, which on the whole are not replaced.

Mr. Millan: As well as ensuring that these figures are properly taken into account by the British Airways Board before deciding on a replacement, will the Minister impress on the board the desirability of coming to a decision soon so that uncertainty on this matter can be removed?

Mr. Price: I am sure that the board is giving this matter urgent consideration, but these aircraft are not strictly comparable. There is an overlap in performance, but the A300B is a shorter range aircraft than the Tristar and has a smaller seating capacity.

Motor Trades

Mr. Skeet: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what the sales of petrol, oil and accessories together with receipts from servicing and repairs were worth in December, 1971, compared with December, 1970; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Fox: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the turnover in the motor trades in the latest month in which figures are available compared with the comparable month for the preceding year; and whether he will make a statement.

Sir J. Eden: The information was published in a Press notice on 14th February. A copy is in the Library. It shows that in December, 1971, the total turnover of the motor trades was 17 per cent. more, at current prices, than in December, 1970. For sales of petrol, oil and accessories, plus receipts from servicing and repairs, the increase was 5 per cent.

Mr. Skeet: I am very much obliged to my hon. Friend for that answer. Can he give an idea of his estimate for the trend of sales in the next year and also of the number of vehicles currently on the road and anticipated to be on the road by the end of next year, and the possible effect of V.A.T. in the new system?

Sir J. Eden: I cannot give all the figures for which my hon. Friend asks without notice, but the trend in sales, hopefully, will continue to be upward as the economy continues to expand.

Mr. Rose: What proportion of the sales of oil and accessories were made at independent outlets? Will the hon. Gentleman look into the growing tendency to restrict consumer choice in respect of oil and accessories and also the growing tendency to restrict the sales of certain oils and accessories at tied garages or garages owned by petroleum companies? Will he consider action against monopolies in that respect?

Sir J. Eden: In reply to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question, the turnover statistics for the motor trades are based on a monthly sample inquiry to motor dealers, repairers, filling stations, tyre dealers, caravan dealers and wholesalers. It is not possible from these to pick out the detailed information for which the hon. Gentleman asks. On the second part of the question, provision is already made for looking at possible cases of monopoly.

Reinforced Composite Materials (Standards and Codes)

Mr. Ellis: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will instruct the British Standards Institution to draw up appropriate standards and codes of practice for using reinforced composite materials.

Mr. David Price: Because the British Standards Institution is an independent body, we have no authority to instruct it to produce standards or codes of practice.

Mr. Ellis: Is the Minister aware that there is a serious lack of authenticated design and performance data for these new materials and that design work and certification, therefore, has nothing on which it can be based, that this puts our modern industries at a disadvantage and embarrasses assurance companies and other certifying bodies? Is he also aware that some Continental countries, particularly Germany, are now beginning to move ahead of us in this respect? Does he not agree that the by now extensive industries in this field would be greatly encouraged by an official lead?

Mr. Price: The hon. Gentleman is not correct. In fields such as polyester resins, for instance, standards are laid down by the B.S.I. I suspect from the Question that the hon. Gentleman has in mind carbon fibre. Possibly he could write to me about it. With great respect to him, he simply is not right. I shall not detain the House by quoting B.S.I. standards for a number of materials in this enormous complex called reinforced composite fibres. If the hon. Gentleman would write to me about the particular composites he has in mind, I shall do my best to give the fullest answer.

Regional Policy

Mr. Willey: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a further statement on the review of regional policy.

Mr. John Davies: I have nothing to add to the answer my hon. Friend gave to the right hon. Member on 21st February.—[Vol. 831, c. 195.]

Mr. Willey: Is the Secretary of State aware that it is now quite clear that the replacement of grants by allowances has seriously damaged the development areas? Is he further aware that there is now overwhelming support for a complete restructuring of development area aid? In view of the plight of places such as my constituency, Sunderland, will he treat this as a matter of the gravest urgency?

Mr. Davies: Yes, I am very well aware of the many comments which have been made on the lines the right hon. Gentleman mentions. He may rest assured that I am certainly treating this as a matter of the very greatest urgency.

Dame Irene Ward: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a meeting of the North East Development Council on 10th March? As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister promised me that we should not have to wait much longer for some of the main matters to be decided, will he please get a little speed on, because action is necessary? I should like some action, so be cheerful and let us have it.

Mr. Davies: I can reassure my hon. Friend that speed is very much the essence of the contract, but it will not

perhaps, I fear, be at a rate to satisfy the North East Development Council by 10th March.

Mr. Benn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that now that the C.B.I. has published its recommendations and the T.U.C. Economic Review has also come out with recommendations, and the Press says that the National Economic Development Council is to discuss regional policy at its next meeting, with a Government paper presented, could not that paper be published as a Green Paper or something else so that we could have an opportunity of knowing the line of Government thinking and hon. Members from the regions would be able to contribute their views before the Government view comes forward in their long awaited, long overdue proposals?

Mr. Davies: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows that it needs no publication on the Government's side in order to ensure that views are represented to us from the regions and from many other interests including the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman, if he has need of it, that there is no lack of advice and guidance given to the Government on those subjects.

Industrial Reorganisation Corporation(Disposal of Assets)

Mr. Redmond: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the worth of Government investments in private industry realised since June, 1970; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. John Davies: Industrial Reorganisation Corporation investments which cost about £39 million have been disposed of to date. I am continuing to realise I.R.C. assets.

Mr. Redmond: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Does he feel that this is moving fast enough? Did not the forcing of mergers by the I.R.C. contribute greatly to our unemployment figures, particularly in places such as Lancashire?

Mr. Davies: The realisation is proceeding entirely in line with what I told the House last July, when I said that in disposing of Government held shares or assets for which I am responsible, I should have regard to market values, the


need to safeguard public funds, the industrial logic of the sale and, where necessary, any special factors that might be involved; also, expert advice where appropriate. I take note of my hon. Friend's remarks on the subject of the effect on unemployment.

Mr. J. T. Price: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that a large number of Members of the House, including myself and all my hon. Friends, do not agree that it is sound public finance to dispose of profitable Government investments to the private sector when the Government are still continuing to hold the losing sections of it and the State is responsible for the losing, difficult sections while the profitable sections are being hived off to private investment? This is surely no policy in the present state of our affairs.

Mr. Davies: The criteria I have just stated as being those which guide me do not at all lend themselves to the kind of interpretation the hon. Gentleman has given.

Export Credit Interest Rates(Development Areas)

Mr. Sutcliffe: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will consider varying export credit guarantee interest rates in favour of the development areas.

Mr. Anthony Grant: I share the hon. Member's wish for additional orders for the development areas, but I do not think it appropriate, given the interdependence of any sectors of industry, to introduce different interest rates for different parts of the country.

Mr. Sutcliffe: Does my hon. Friend consider that rates are flexible enough, and will he consider an annual review?
May I remind my hon. Friend that a 1 per cent. difference in rates is equivalent, over a 10-year contract, to a 4 per cent. disadvantage as against our main competitors and, indeed, can lose us contracts?

Mr. Grant: Interest rates generally are kept very carefully under review, and it is the general desire of the Government to be in the middle range of export credits. On the question relating to different rates for different areas, this would cause 

difficulties which would not exactly help British exports, when we reflect that a firm may have components made in one part of the country which is not a development area and other parts of the operation are carried out in a development area. This would be over-complex and would not work.

Gas (Conversion)

Mr. Thomas Cox: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what recent discussions his Department has had with representatives of the Gas Council, following complaints by consumers of the difficulties and financial cost they have experienced as a result of gas conversion.

Sir J. Eden: The Gas Council is well aware of my concern that this major programme should cause minimum inconvenience to the consumers. This is also the aim of the area boards, which are responsible for carrying it out.

Mr. Cox: In spite of that reply, the Minister will be fully aware of the widespread criticism which is being made throughout the country by consumers about the difficulties, and especially the additional financial cost, that conversion causes. Should not the Minister impress on gas boards that they should judge each case on its merits and get away from the practice of the standard compensation claim which in many cases is totally inadequate to meet the additional costs that consumers have had to face?

Sir J. Eden: What the individual area boards do in cases where compensation is justified is a matter for them. My statutory powers of intervention are fairly limited. Questions of hardship are for consideration by the Supplementary Benefits Commission and I know that it takes these matters very much into account.

Sir Bernard Braine: Has my hon. Friend had any discussions with the Gas Council about the deteriorating standards of service and civility being experienced certainly by consumers in the North Thames Gas Board area? Is my hon. Friend aware that the introduction of computer accounting, for example, leads to many errors of accounting followed by a failure to answer consumers' inquiries and threats to cut off the gas supply and that, in the case of elderly


people living alone, this causes great distress and anxiety? Will my hon. Friend investigate this scandalous state of affairs?

Sir J. Eden: Those representations which have been made to me, as well as letters which come to me from hon. Members, are passed on to the area boards concerned as these are matters within their management responsibility.

Company Law (Review)

Mr. Trew: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement on the progress of his review of company law.

Mr. John Davies: We are pressing ahead with the work as fast as possible, with a view to making proposals for legislation.

Mr. Trew: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the high regard in which British company law is held in Europe? Will he do his best to ensure that it forms the basis of any company law in the E.E.C.?

Mr. Davies: Yes, what my hon. Friend says is absolutely correct. British company law is held in very high regard in Europe. The Community looks forward to the contribution that Britain can make to its thinking on Community company law.

Mr. Dell: Is it true that the Government have no intention of introducing a new Companies Bill for at least two years? If so, does that mean that there will be further delay in improving the requirements regarding financial disclosure?

Mr. Davies: I think it improbable that there will be any early introduction of a Bill on company law matters—at least not a wide-ranging one. It is therefore possible that there will be some delay, but it is my earnest hope to introduce a Companies Bill during the course of this Parliament.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Is the Secretary of State aware that the existing company law gives him certain statutory rights and imposes duties on him and that his Department has consistently failed to carry out the law? There are hundreds of companies fleecing the public and taking money out of shareholders' pockets because the Secretary of State refuses to see that they carry out the law. Will

he deal with about 30 cases that are on his files and have been sent to him by hon. Members on both sides?

Mr. Davies: I am very conscious of the statutory rights and duties that the British company law gives me. I am also conscious of the fact that they are dealt with with efficiency and dispatch.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: What about V. and G.?

European Economic Community

Mr. John Hannam: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will examine the effects on small firms of entry into the European Economic Community.

Mr. John Davies: The Bolton Committee recommended that we should study the effect of entry upon small firms in order to help them take advantage of the opportunities in the E.E.C. This study is well under way and we expect to decide by summer whether special steps are needed to supplement the comprehensive campaign which we have already launched. We have much information available for those who seek it.

Mr. Hannam: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that small firms in Europe have benefited considerably since the E.E.C. has been in being? Will he make a real effort to ensure that these facts are well known in Britain, so as to reassure and allay the fears of our small businesses once we follow suit and go into the Common Market?

Mr. John Davies: Yes, there is plenty of evidence to support what my hon. Friend says. For example, figures quoted by the C.B.I. show that in Western Germany between 1960 and 1967 small firms' sales rose by 50 per cent. while those of industry as a whole rose by only 40 per cent.

Ball Bearing Industry (Japanese Competition)

Mr. Simeons: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps he is taking to safeguard the interests of the ball bearing industry from unfair Japanese competition.

Mr. Anthony Grant: A recent request by the industry for the Government to


ask the Japanese Government to limit voluntarily the growth of bearings sales to this country is under urgent consideration. We await further information which industry has been asked to provide.

Mr. Simeons: In view of the impact that these Japanese imports are having on future employment prospects in the industry, will my hon. Friend urge upon the industry the necessity for a quick answer and then get weaving himself when he has got it?

Mr. Grant: I can give my hon. Friend an assurance on both those points. The sooner we get the additional information we have asked for, the sooner we can move quickly.

Mr. Bob Brown: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the serious danger to the employment prospects of many thousands of employees in the ball bearing and machine tool industry? Will he accept the urgency of making the strongest possible representations on this issue?

Mr. Grant: Certainly, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will request the industry to give us the information as soon as possible.

Jam, Honey and Marmalade

Miss Fookes: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will exercise his powers under the Weights and Measures Act, 1963, so as to require jam, honey and marmalade to be sold in prescribed quantities.

Sir J. Eden: Under the provisions of the Act, jam, honey and marmalade, with unimportant exceptions, are already required to be sold, when prepacked, in a prescribed range of quantities.

Miss Fookes: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that it is a very strange range that is allowed and that I am only sorry I did not bring a pot to show him?

Sir J. Eden: I hope that my hon. Friend will take an early opportunity of doing so.

Mr. Molloy: Do not both this Question and the matters raised in Questions Nos. 13 and 20 indicate strongly that the watchdog of the public—namely, the Consumer Council—should be recreated?

Sir J. Eden: I am aware of the general consumer interest in ensuring that what people believe they are buying they in fact buy.

Mr. Cormack: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the fact that on 14th March I shall seek to introduce a Unit Pricing Bill, and may I express the hope that this will meet with Government support?

Sir J. Eden: I take note of what my hon. Friend says.

Industrial Development Certificates (Derbyshire)

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many industrial development certificates were granted in the County of Derbyshire during 1971.

Mr. Anthony Grant: Seventy-five.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is my hon. Friend aware that in grey areas and areas that are not development areas the I.D.C. policy at present pursued is more liable to be a deterrent than anything else? Will my hon. Friend institute with my right hon. Friend an urgent review of the policy, because it is crippling in areas such as my part of Derbyshire, where increased industry is required urgently?

Mr. Grant: I assure my hon. Friend that the regional policy is under review. Meanwhile we shall operate the I.D.C. policy as flexibly and sympathetically as possible.

Insurance Law

Sir Robin Turton: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what action he proposes to take to amend the law relating to insurance.

Mr. John Davies: In pursuance of the review which I announced last March, extensive consultations with the insurers and other interested parties are in progress. I shall of course take into account the report of the V. & G. Tribunal. I hope to reach conclusions as to the nature of any amendments to the Insurance Companies Acts which may be necessary during the early summer.

Sir R. Turton: Will my right hon. Friend take note of the difficulties that insurance brokers find under the present


state of the law when insurance companies become insolvent or are placed under restriction in pursuance of the operation of his powers under the Companies Act?

Mr. Davies: I am indeed very conscious of this problem and am in close consultation with the organisations representing the insurance broking interests on matters such as this.

Mr. Dell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one piece of hiving off which would be welcome is that of the Insurance and Companies Division of his Department, making it instead a statutory agency? Is that possibility being considered during the right hon. Gentleman's present review?

Mr. Davies: The matters that I have specifically under review in relation to insurance do not at the moment envisage the hiving off of that activity, though I am not necessarily averse to considering any such proposition if it is put before me.

Electricity (Resale to Tenants)

Dr. Marshall: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps he is taking to prevent the resale of electricity at a profit to tenants of rooms, flats, caravans and similar accommodation.

Sir J. Eden: Suggestions have been made that charging more than the statutory maximum price should be made a criminal offence, but I have decided that legislation to this effect would not be justified as it would be unlikely to be significantly more effective than the present law. But I am in touch with the consultative councils and the electricity boards about mounting a publicity campaign designed to ensure that those concerned are made better aware of the

maximum prices laid down and the present means of enforcement.

Mr. Dr. Marshall: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in many instances where electricity is resold the charge per unit does not vary according to the amount of power consumed, even though the supplying electricity board may have a considerably reduced rate above a certain level of consumption? Will the hon. Gentleman bear this change of rate particularly in mind in any discussions he has?

Sir J. Eden: Yes, I certainly will.

Sir G. Nabarro: Would the Minister bear in mind that the practices of electricity boards have been brought into grave doubt in the public mind in recent months, including the whole of the nefarious practice of estimating people's accounts even 300, 400 or 500 per cent. more than the actual amount? Should not the Minister impress a code of conduct on electricity boards in the interests of millions of defenceless consumers?

Sir J. Eden: My hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) and I have already discussed this matter in debate in the House. He therefore knows that it is under very active study by the Electricity Council and the electricity boards.

Mr. Bob Brown: Is it not a fact that any landlord can resell gas or electricity through a check meter to a tenant at any price he cares to charge, and should not this practice be tackled and controlled?

Sir J. Eden: We have considered whether legislation should make this a criminal offence and decided it would not materially advance the protection of the consumer. The consumer wants to know exactly what his rights are. It is to this end that a major publicity campaign is being prepared.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[13TH ALLOTTED DAY],—considered.

Orders of the Day — EMPLOYMENT

Mr. Speaker: Before calling upon the right hon. Member for Bristol. South-East (Mr. Benn) to move his Motion, I should inform the House that I have selected the Amendment in the name of the Prime Minister and his right hon. Friends.

3.32 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Bean: I beg to move,
That this House, deeply concerned at the continuing high level of unemployment which imposes wholly unacceptable burdens upon large numbers of people in the community, and constitutes an appalling waste of resources, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to adopt full employment as a central objective of its economic policy and bring forward measures to secure it.
This is a short debate and I want to be brief, but it would be impossible for the House to let the figures published last Thursday go without a debate upon them. I hope no one is going to be deceived by the very slight fall in the numbers of totally unemployed and the slight increase in the number of vacancies, which, though welcome in themselves, provide no ground whatever for believing that the problem is on the way to being solved. It is not, and, as our Motion makes clear, it could not be solved without a major change of policy.
I turn first to the number of temporarily stopped, which inflated the figures when they were published. There were 598,000 people temporarily stopped as a result of the coal strike. This is not the occasion to discuss the coal dispute in any detail, but the massive lay-offs which inflated the figures this month stem directly from the Government's policy and from the total miscalculation which they made both of the feeling of the miners and, even more important, of the attitude of the public. Although reference has been made before in the House to this, I must repeat that if the Secretary of State had seen the National Union of Mineworkers himself at any stage from the

time he took over responsibility for the industry, at any rate he would have been better equipped to tell the Cabinet how the miners would react to the situation which confronted them. It is clear that the Cabinet was equally ill-informed as to the likely attitude of the public towards the miners, but the Minister is not responsible for that. I am certain that the public supported the miners because it was felt that their case was just.
The figures of temporarily stopped to which I have referred underestimate the total numbers of people affected. The Secretary of State gave figures the other day of between I million and 2 million workers affected by the lay-offs. Production was disrupted, the National Coal Board is faced with an enormous extra bill, the Railways Board will have to pay substantial extra sums over and above those that it had budgeted for, and exports were affected. I think there is no doubt that the coal strike was the most expensive single error of judgment made by any Government since the war. It certainly delayed such growth in production as the Government hope for as a result of the measures that they have taken so far.
I turn to the basic problem of the unemployed, as distinct from those temporarily stopped, and reiterate what is said in our Motion, that unemployment is unacceptably high and not even the most optimistic observer sees any prospect whatever of bringing it down to acceptable levels or to the levels even of the summer of 1970 by the use of existing measures. The shake-out is still continuing, as is the multiplier effect caused by those out of work then being unable to make demands for goods. This all indicates that unemployment is a very intractable problem. The T.U.C. Economic Review, published today, to which I shall refer again later, estimates that a 6 per cent. growth rate would be necessary to get the figure down to £750,000 within a year.
We have debated unemployment many times and we shall do so again. I want to deal today not so much with the economic aspects of the problem in the sense of detailed policies but rather to point out the social and political consequences for our society of trying to accept the present high level of unemployment


which all the indicators suggest that we shall continue to have. Personally, I think that one of the greatest weaknesses of some of our discussions has been the tendency to think of unemployment as an economic problem and not as a much broader social problem.
It is clear that in Scotland, Wales and the worst-hit English regions there is a sense of desperation which many in these areas feel cannot be allowed to continue without actually damaging the fabric of society and the community in those areas. It affects the school leavers and the older unskilled workers and it creates ghost communities. Without wishing to be alarmist in any way, anyone who looks at the events in Northern Ireland over the last two years, and particularly over the last year, will realise that the hopelessness associated with unemployment has enormously worsened the basic problem from which that province suffers. There is already evidence not of events moving in quite that direction, but that the high and uncured level of unemployment has built up political pressures in Scotland and Wales and other parts of the country which the Government will have to take into account.
The second broader social consequence to which I wish to draw attention is the effect of unemployment on industrial relations in their broadest sense. It is impossible to expect full co-operation in the introduction of new machinery, even if new investment were coming along at the rate we would like. It is impossible to expect agreement on productivity and to get consent for the necessary restructuring of industry, and it is going to be much harder to get trade union agreement to necessary re-training schemes unless the trade union movement feels that the Government take the problem of unemployment seriously.
The third broad social effect of unemployment is on the distribution of income. The Government's incomes policy is not confined to the secret norm which no one is prepared to describe except in identifying what is called a special case. Those who lose their jobs drop to a social security norm which is fixed by the Government, and when redundancy pay and earnings-related benefits run out it means that those affected experience real poverty.
The effect of unemployment on public attitudes to the Common Market should not be left out of account by the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. There is no question but that a major factor in maintaining a high level of opposition to entry into the Common Market is that people, especially in Scotland, Wales and the regions, fear that entry will worsen their prospects of reducing unemployment, and that it will remove from the British Government the power to take corrective action against unemployment. That is the point of substance that lies behind the sometimes apparently theoretical argument about sovereignty.
People go further and suspect that the Government see European entry as an external influence to increase labour discipline. When I sought to obtain from the Under-Secretary today a clear assurance that there would be no unilateral reduction of tariffs on motorcars, my failure to get such an assurance confirmed my belief that the Government see in entry an opportunity to increase their pressure against the trade union movement. The Government had better not underestimate the broad political effects of their policy.
The first requirement if we are to correct the unemployment problem is one important policy change above all others by the Government. They must reestablish full employment as a central objective of government—say it, mean it and introduce policies that are likely to bring it about. That would be much more important as a test of intent, of will, than all the subtlety, all the pressure from the right hon. Gentleman's Department in producing individual instruments that might bring it about. If the Prime Minister and the Cabinet were thought to be half as determined to bring unemployment down as they are to get this country into the Common Market, and if they were half as determined to implement policies designed to achieve it, the situation would change its character.
The Prime Minister's broadcast last night exactly illustrated that point. At no stage did the right hon. Gentleman mention full employment. Within a few days of the publication of figures showing a gross overall number out of work of 1·6 million, the right hon. Gentleman did not even, except for a


slight reference en passant saying that the miners' strike did not create new jobs, identify full employment as something that his audience might wish to hear from him was a problem to which the Government intended to devote themselves. The impression he created last night of aloofness from the problem confirmed the suspicion of many people which I have articulated in the House many times, that even now, when the miners' strike is over, he does not understand that the strike was in part a product of unemployment. The 500,000 men the coal industry had to shed over the past few years gave the miners the feeling that they had to fight on this issue—[Interruption.] That was the case. If the right hon. Gentleman had met the National Union of Mineworkers at any time in the past 18 months he would have known that the miners, quite apart from the very high rundown under all Governments, including our own—[Interruption.] Of course, it did. But if the Government are to take on the mining community they had better understand why it feels as strongly as it does. The Prime Minister's failure to say anything to the million people out of work was an indication of his failure to understand the problem.
The first step the Government must take is political, to bring full employment back into the forefront of our national objective where the wartime Coalition Government put it after the publication of the Beveridge Report. There is no point in complaining about the polarisation of our society, which lies just under the surface of much of what Ministers say, if the Government abandon a central feature of our post-war social contract.
The second requirement is also political in character. After nearly two years in office, the time has come for the Government to abandon the policy of disengagement from industry. Disengagement was the Government's theme in their long years in opposition, and it is a theme the Secretary of State has taken to his heart and made it his business to advocate during his time in charge of the Department of Trade and Industry. The theory, which we heard time and again from Government spokesmen, was that competition would keep down prices, that confrontation would keep wages down, and that as a result the problems of unemployment would be easy to solve.

That policy has totally failed. The Government have stood aside. They have themselves actively dismantled the machinery of co-operation with both sides of industry which, it must be said in fairness, were first established by Harold Macmillan, when the Economic Development Council was set up. Incidentally, its tenth anniversary is to be celebrated by, of all things, a party at No. 10, Downing Street, next week. The whole process of trying to build up the machinery for a continual dialogue with industry has been destroyed by the Secretary of State.
No modern society, whatever policy the Government in question wish to pursue, can possibly survive without far closer contact between Government and industry than this Government have maintained. Three men are responsible for their policy. First and foremost, there is the Secretary of State himself, a man heading an enormous Department of State, with seven Ministers, 25,000 civil servants, 70 policy divisions and 40 offices in London. Yet the policy to which he has dedicated himself has been to withdraw from contact with industry. Never in the field of administration was so little done by so many for so few. That, broadly, is the philosophy of the Department of Trade and Industry.
The second Minister responsible, as was confirmed by Vic Feather in his broadcast at lunchtime today, is the Secretary of State for Employment, who has made it his business to stand back from the confrontations that have developed between management and labour. Vic Feather said, "We once had a hot line; now we have a cold shoulder." That is not a bad description of the right hon. Gentleman's policy.
Thirdly, there is the Prime Minister himself, who has made it his business to keep out of all these matters to the point where he gives the impression of regarding industrial relations and unemployment as being well below his level. [Interruption] That is certainly the impression he not only gives but chooses to give. He is the Howard Hughes of No. 10, Downing Street.
The vacuum left by the Government is now being filled by industry.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman: Is not my right hon. Friend


being a little unfair to the Minister for Industry in leaving him out, in view of the item on the City page of the Daily Telegraph last week which quoted the hon. Gentleman as telling industrialists, "I do not know how industry works"?

Mr. Benn: My complaint about the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is that, although he said in a speech on the electricity restrictions, "I, who have devoted my life to industry, regret that I should be making announcements which in the short run will do it such damage.". he totally forgot that industry includes the workers in it. He proved that by his absolute failure to make it his business to get in touch with the trade unions with which he should work if his policy, whatever it is, is to succeed.
The vacuum that has been encouraged to develop is now being filled by initiatives from both sides of industry. The C.B.I. plan for regional development, published last week, calls for a Government commission for the regions, which would have advisory and executive powers and have money put at its disposal to encourage regional development. It calls for greater regional initiative.
I certainly do not say that it is a perfect scheme, but it is a great advance by the C.B.I. on the policy of the Government. Indeed, last summer, when the C.B.I. took its price initiative, its action was not perfect then, but the Government simply left it to the C.B.I. to take that initiative, thus not giving it the opportunity which it might otherwise have had of being fitted into a policy more likely to be accepted by both sides of industry.
Today the T.U.C. Economic Review similarly calls for a public investment agency, for a national manpower board, for a £1,500 million injection into the Budget, for a £2 increase in pensions, for higher family allowances, for more public works, for a reduction in purchase tax, for the restoration of investment grants linked to the creation of job opportunities. The trade union movement more generally has been thinking aloud about the need for a shorter working life, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) introduced his Employment (Holiday Extension and Early Retirement)

Bill recently. All the initiatives on unemployment have come from others than the Secretary of State himself.
The third requirement, therefore, is that the Government must no longer allow industry to feel that it is engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster described it at one stage about the negotiations for entry into the Common Market. It must begin to discuss these matters seriously with industry.
I must give a word of warning to the Secretary of State for Employment. He must not suppose that scares are going to give him the co-operation he wishes. According to the Sunday Express—I hope it quoted him correctly—the Secretary of State said:
There are active in our society small but virulent minorities who would like to see the whole present structure of our society destroyed and who believe that economic failure is the best way to bring it about.
Of course there are such people. There always have been and always will be. The point is that the Government are the best recruiting sergeants for those groups. The right hon. Gentleman himself is responsible through his own legislation, as is the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, for giving to those small, ineffective, tiny minorities a far larger audience than they would ever have in a fair society.
I warn the Government that if a Zinoviev letter is their answer to the problem of unemployment and inflation and everything else, they should think again, because the British people are no more likely to fall under the influence of the "angry brigade" now than at any other time. If the Government suppose that the sort of speech made by the right hon. Gentleman will frighten everyone into supporting the Cabinet, they are underestimating the intelligence of the public again as they did during the miners' strike.

Mr. John Pardoe: I think that the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) is going a little too far in a partisan spirit. Would he like to say whether the remarks by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) as Prime Minister some years ago, about a tightly-knit group of politically motivated people, encouraged or discouraged that belief?

Mr. Benn: My right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) was not dealing with the same issue as faces us today. What was said by the Prime Minister last night and by the Secretary of State for Employment on Saturday was aimed to give the impression that the troubles created by the Government's own policy actually stemmed from a small group of people who have somehow managed to get themselves into a position of power in our society.

The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Robert Carr): The right hon. Gentleman cannot put words into my mouth which I never used. I did not say anything like what he has just attributed to me; nor did I imply it. Since the right hon. Gentleman has thus interpreted my remarks—which the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) likened to those used by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) when he was Prime Minister—and since our legislation is cited by the right hon. Gentleman as one of the causes of the trouble, why did he, as a member of the Government, support "In Place of Strife"?

Mr. Benn: I am coming to the Industrial Relations Act. If I have misinterpreted what the Secretary of State has said, then he should have put it more clearly in his Press release. The only conclusion that one can reach after reading that passage in the Sunday Express is that he is trying to build up a scare in order to cover up his own manifest failure.
The problem facing the Government is how to get an understanding with the trade union movement. The hitter hostility which has been shown, by none more than the right hon. Gentleman, to the trade union movement plays a very large part in that problem. The right hon. Gentleman invested much of his time in opposition in building up the hostility which he thought he needed towards the trade unions in order to get a head of steam for his industrial relations legislation, and his proudest achievement to date is that that Act comes into force today.
I come now to what I promised to deal with. We shall repeal the Industrial Relations Act. We shall do so

however long it takes. It took us from 1927 to 1946 before we acquired the power to repeal the Trade Disputes Act, 1927, but we did repeal it.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the policy of the last Government. If anything, our attitude to his legislation was in part influenced by our experience with our own proposals. The Government should not under-estimate the importance of seeking genuine cooperation with the trade union movement. I warn the right hon. Gentleman that public attitudes to the trade union movement have altered in the last 18 months. With the rise in unemployment, many people who did not do so before now realise the importance of trade union membership, if only as a defence against redundancy, while many families now realise, perhaps for the first time, that the trade union movement also protects them from price increases. [Laughter.] What do hon. Members opposite think the miners have been doing other than fighting the problem of rising prices by putting in a wage claim and getting it established by the Wilberforce Report? That is what the trade union movement is about. It is not possible to beat inflation in this country without the co-operation of the trade union movement.

Mr. Dan Jones: If they have not learned that, they have not learnt the lessons of the coal strike.

Mr. Benn: As my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) points out, if hon. Members opposite have not learnt that, then they have not even begun to learn the lessons of the miners' dispute. Lord George-Brown, in 1964, tried a voluntary incomes policy. Our statutory policy failed; Lord George-Brown himself admitted that, and there is no question about it. But compared with the policy of confrontation, which is a total disaster, even our policy at any rate had the merit of being linked to a social objective which could be clearly understood.
The truth is that there will have to be a new initiative on incomes. The Prime Minister and the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry and for Employment speak about the relationship of prices and incomes and inflation and employment as if they had suddenly brought the


tablets of stone down from Mount Sinai. It is a self-evident proposition that these are linked. When we talk about incomes, we cannot restrict it to wages alone and certainly not to wages in the public sector alone. If we want to fight inflation, we must make a fresh start with both sides of industry and bring into our discussions everything that affects incomes. The Budget, with its selective tax remissions, is one aspect of incomes policy because it redistributes incomes between one group and another. The Housing Finance Bill, with its savage rent increases, is another part of the Government's incomes policy because it redistributes income between one section of the community and another. The rocketing price of land which the Government have allowed is part of their incomes policy because it redistributes money between landlord and tenant.
Unemployment is part of the incomes policy, too, because it throws millions of people down to a level of living standards which constitutes poverty. The distribution of wealth is a part of the incomes policy. Wage-earners do not see why they alone, when their incomes are increased, should be hauled before television cameras and the public and grilled about every penny when all of these other sections of the community, with the support of the Government, are able to get their increases without any public inquiry. Perhaps the most fundamental part of the incomes policy is the Government's education policy. If they maintain an education policy such as that operated by the Secretary of State for Education, then they are introducing an incomes policy for life for a section of the community by preserving the 11-plus and other such aspects.
The most powerful instinct of the British people is a sense of fair play. That is the point I made at the beginning which explains the public's support for the miners. An unfair society cannot solve the problems of unemployment or beat inflation or, for that matter, drive back any risk there might ever be of violence. It is time that this was plainly said. It is not new economic schemes we want, nor little incentives of a kind that can be produced by the Treasury to inject into a Budget. It is a commitment to a fair society, which this Government

have so notably failed to offer or provide. This is the political challenge about which the Prime Minister offered not one word in his broadcast last night.
These issues cannot be wished away. We cannot frighten people either by scares about virulent minorities or by dark hints of double dangers. The problem is not that Britain is ungovernable but that Britain is being badly governed. That is the challenge that the Government have to face. In this debate, in the House and outside, people are now waiting to hear whether the Government have learned anything from their experiences of the last two weeks. A complacent Amendment, or statistics of achievement, or promises or warnings are not really enough.
The question is: are the Government now to try to commit themselves to fair policies worked out in agreement with both sides of industry? If the answer is "No", then let them go out before their policies bring us any nearer to the dangers about which they now warn us and which they have done so much to create.

4.3 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. John Davies): I beg to move, to leave out from "community" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
'commends Her Majesty's Government for their resolute efforts to secure a reduction in unemployment by massive economic measures, including the containment of inflation, with full employment as the objective'.
It is clear that this debate takes place in exceptional circumstances. The shadow of the coal strike still hangs over the economy. Although there has been obvious and immediate relief as a result of the overwhelming ballot in favour of a return to work there is still great concern about the impact that the strike must have had on the prosperity of the nation and much clearly now depends upon the rate of resumption of production in the coalfields and, therefore, the speed at which the country can expect to be returned to normal.
The immediate effect of the coal strike is as the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) pointed out, namely, to produce distorted unemployment figures. The total figure is greatly affected by nearly 600,000 temporarily stopped. Even that probably underrates


the number of people who have had their work disrupted by the strike. I mentioned the figure of 1½ million last week and that is some indication of the level affected. It is to be hoped that the resumption will take place speedily and effectively and those concerned in the electricity generating and supply industries as well as those involved in the removal of coal from coalfields will contribute effectively to this operation.
Despite the major issues involved in the strike and the problems it has posed, the fundamental objective remains as it was before—to reduce the unacceptable level of unemployment and contain the excessive rate of inflation. The right hon. Gentleman was well off course in imagining that the Government have any other purpose than to bring every effort to bear to reduce unemployment. I would refer him to the very first statement of intentions within the framework of the Gracious Speech, which clearly said:
At home, my Government's first care will be to increase employment by strengthening the economy…
I thought that the right hon. Gentleman's remarks about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and his attitude to this question and to the unions was a travesty of the truth.
The Government treat this as a matter of the utmost seriousness and are giving every possible attention to it. The figures published last week, if shorn of the exceptional factors occasioned by the coal strike, showed some of the first signs, perhaps, of the situation responding to the unprecedented stimulus which has been given by the Government to expanding the economy. Seasonally adjusted figures of wholly unemployed still showed a small increase of 1,000, but this marginal increase was evidence of a welcome reduction from the 20,000 or so which has been the monthly average over the last year.
Equally, the outstanding vacancies figures also gave some element of reassurance, in the sense that these figures tend to respond more sensitively to changes in the employment situation than the unemployment figures. Here we have seen a seasonally adjusted increase of 7,300 in contrast with the pattern of the last 12 months when we saw, in the early stages, a steep decline in the num-

ber of available vacancies followed by a plateau, a stagnant position.
Even so, these shafts of light are not enough to relieve the continuing gloom of approximately one million people unemployed. The causes of this unemployment are too well known to need reiteration but essentially they are the direct result of a stagnant economy struggling with pervasive and excessive wage inflation. Massive deflationary efforts which were deployed by the party opposite when in power in 1968–69 to come to grips with the overriding problem—as it then seemed—of the balance of payments left the economy in a debilitated state from which it has proved exceedingly difficult to revive it. I will not repeat the great catalogue of measures which have been undertaken by the Government to raise the level of production and re-create confidence after those body blows of 1968–69, followed as they were by the inflationary propulsion given to the economy in early 1970.
The fact remains that the cumulative total of the Chancellor's measures, great as they are, is an indication of the extent to which both the economy and confidence in it had been deflated. The other and more worrying aspect of the aftermath of the coal strike is in the fight against inflation. The Government have been waging a battle against inflation on behalf of the community as a whole. The community as a whole must be the only sufferers from the continuation of excessive inflationary movement.

Mr. Dan Jones: Mr. Dan Jones rose—

Mr. Davies: This is a short debate and I have a lot to say. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not give way.
The battle against inflation is a twofold one, on wages and prices. On the wages front, the battle involves taking every possible action in the public and private sectors to restrain wage surge. It is wrong of hon. Gentlemen opposite to charge the Government with having sought to operate on the public sector alone while allowing the private sector to run free. The statistics clearly show that de-escalation has been working not in one sector alone.
On the contrary, increases in average earnings reduced from a level of 13½, per cent. in 1970 to less than 9½ per cent. in


1971, and this index is influenced overwhelmingly by the private and not the public sector. But 9½per cent. is still far too high and can only damage the prospects of reducing unemployment. Beyond all doubt, unemployment has responded directly to industry's unavoidable need to contain unit costs.
This need is, of course, dictated by its problem in export markets and partially by the requirement not to fall behind, in competitive terms, its competitors overseas. It has also been necessary to meet the Government's continued pressure to exercise price restraint in pricing policies, as exemplified by the C.B.I. initiative.
Caught between these pressures, there is no doubt that industry had to shed manpower rapidly, particularly in 1971, seeking by productivity to offset the escalating labour costs with which it has been beset. In prices terms alone the results, taking account of the prevailing wage situation, have been surprisingly successful.
Wholesale prices at home have been rising by only 1½ per cent. in the last six months compared with 4 per cent. in the previous six months. Home retail prices, excluding seasonal food items, rose by only 2₽ per cent. in the six months to January, as against 5½ per cent. in the previous six months. Export prices have not entirely followed this trend, but it is true to say that the whole effort which has been made in the prices sphere has not been without result and that the worrying tendencies which were so prevalent in the economy 12 months ago have undoubtedly been somewhat contained.
If now, as a result of the coal settlement, there is a further determined effort to escalate wage costs, it seems inescapable not only that will prices start to rise again more rapidly; I have the more ominous fear that the marginally encouraging evidence of last week's unemployment figures will be reversed.
In today's conditions there is no doubt that excessive wage demands, ruthlessly pressed to finality, can only damage us all by steeply inflating prices and by worsening unemployment. In many ways the outlook at the beginning of this year was promising, and it may still be promising. The economy is undoubtedly expanding at about the rate foreseen by

my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last July—between 4 per cent. and 4½ per cent.—but to date expansion has certainly been selective and has taken place largely in personal expenditure rather than in investment.
Equally, however, the rise in exports has accounted for quite an important part of the total expansion. Industrial production has certainly not yet responded to the expansion. One reason for this is to be found in the steadily drawing down of stocks that occurred as demand started to rise. The figures showed this tendency strongly in the third quarter of last year and even into the final quarter, though in December there was some evidence of a contrary movement.
It is likely that the interruption in industrial pick-up caused by the coal strike will be reflected in still further drawing down of stocks before stock building starts to resume. It is clear that as industrial production starts to upturn to meet the continued and sustained level of demand which has been created by the measures that have been taken, stockpiling activity will act as a spur to industrial production. It is therefore to be expected that once it starts the rise is likely to gather pace rapidly.
However, as has become evident, the absorption of unemployment will not happen easily, or respond almost automatically to the pick-up in industry. It is clear that there is a good deal of under-utilised capacity both in manpower and in plant which will be called on first, before investment and employment start to rise together. What will really make a dent in unemployment is new and sustained demand, and not just making good what is already happening.
In this connection, it might be useful if I were to comment on certain individual industries and their situation in relation to the economy. Consumer durables generally have had a good six months, with demand rising strongly, and they seem certain to need to move to a high level of production in the near future to rebuild stocks and to face sustained high consumer demand. This is particularly true of the motor industry, which will certainly have to shift into higher gear, together with its satellite industries.
The year 1971 constituted a record in registrations, with an increase of 19 per


cent. over 1970. The figures for January and February have not added to that increase, but have probably maintained the same high level.
In a different sphere, shoes and clothing got off the mark rather slower than consumer durables, but they, too, moved up apace in the last quarter of last year and seem to be holding their position in terms of demand. In capital goods there is as yet little response to the expansion in other spheres, though I am now looking forward to an improvement in manufacturing investment in the latter part of this year.
In particular, the problem in the machine tool industry is disturbing. This industry lies at the very last link of the chain reaction and is particularly susceptible to cyclical variation. I am keeping closely in touch with the problems of this industry to see how it is coping with its difficulties.
I wish particularly to comment on shipbuilding. The House is well aware that the industry moved into a period of deteriorating orders last year, not just here but world-wide. European shipbuilders generally, our own included, have been facing a continuation of weathering the storm of steeply rising costs and fixed prices while at the same time facing diminishing order books.
There has been much discussion, both in O.E.C.D. and E.E.C. with a view to avoiding, by agreement, escalating national subsidies, whose only purpose is to intensify inter-yard competition at the taxpayers' expense. I am hopeful that these discussions will find solutions to these problems.
But meanwhile I am concerned that our own industry, which is relatively less subsidised than that of some other countries, should not suffer. This is more than ever important in that 90 per cent. of employment in merchant shipbuilding is in areas of high unemployment. We have, therefore, been reviewing the whole situation and I expect in due course to act on the conclusions we reach.

Dame Irene Ward: When?

Mr. Davies: Soon. [HON. MEMBERS: "How soon?"] I look forward soon to having the completion of this review.
As the House knows, one particular case is subject to imperatives of urgency

which will not allow of further deliberation. I speak, of course, of the yards of the Upper Clyde. I find it difficult to make an absolutely definitive statement in today's conditions because the work that has been going on is not yet finalised. I am sure, however, that in the meantime—particularly in this debate—the House would wish to have some details about the present situation.
The history of the recent tempestuous years of these yards is too well known to warrant repetition, but I recall that the merger which took place four years ago to bring them together in the corporate form of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders was the signal for an unending series of convulsions which culminated in the liquidation of the company in the summer of last year. During the first two years of the company's life over £20 million was injected into it, not in the form of inputs to a carefully prepared and analysed programme but as a series of salvage operations. I consider that the industrial consultation with, and the industrial experience of, the company is certainly not the best testimony to the effectiveness of the right hon. Gentleman's own form of consultations. Of that £20 million every penny was lost, with no productive impact whatever in terms of the improvement of the yards. That is certainly true. There was no improvement during that period.
Only last year, and in the teeth of the utmost opposition from the party opposite, the decision was taken to inquire deeply into what was necessary to allow major merchant shipbuilding on the Upper Clyde to continue on a competitive and satisfactory basis, giving a real guarantee of stability to the thousands of workers involved. While that was going forward the Government have assisted the receiver to maintain work in the yards.
After many obstacles have been surmounted, including the infinitely regrettable death of Hugh Stenhouse, those inquiries are now completed. I am afraid that they confirm that the maintenance of Clydebank as a competitive merchant yard for a wide range of ship production is unrealistic. Happily, however, two American firms are interested in acquiring Clydebank for specialised construction, one for drilling rigs and the other for liquid natural gas carriers.


Both are in active discussions with my Department and with the receiver. I am guardedly hopeful that one or other of these projects will succeed, and certainly every help will be forthcoming from the Government within the powers available to them.
The other three yards, Govan, Scotstoun and Linthouse, are considered by the consultants as capable, with considerable investment, of being transformed into a complex fully up to comparable European standards for similar construction.
The management of Govan Shipbuilders Limited accepts the challenge of undertaking the proposed project, which still has many uncertainties, including that of acquiring orders for new ships in what is an exceedingly dull and difficult market at the moment. To this end, it has engaged in progressively more intense discussions with the unions involved to iron out working agreements, and is satisfied that acceptable arrangements can be made and will be implemented. It cannot with certainty forecast a date by which viability will be attained, though commercial viability remains its objective.
The sums of money involved are enormous, and show up for the valueless estimates they were the U.C.S.'s claims last summer to be able to continue to trade legally provided the Government would find just £6 million to weather the immediate storm. The consultants' present estimates are that £17 million will be needed over the first three years to meet the losses on the early order book of the new company, including both orders taken over from the former U.C.S. and the new orders to maintain activity in the yards. In addition, £18 million will be needed for investment in the yards and for working capital.
I have a letter dated 7th February from the Chairman of Govan Shipbuilders Limited, Lord Strathalmond, which I propose to place in the Library, and the general report of the consultants will be published as soon as possible.
Although, naturally, I am deeply concerned that the new company cannot firmly forecast the date of attainment of full commercial viability I am none the less relieved that it foresees moving into surplus after the first three years. In

these circumstances, and subject to some further examination of the plans, discussion of the exact sums of money required—because there are still some doubts about all this—and confirmation of the reaching of satisfactory agreements with the unions, I am prepared to propose legislation to this House to carry through this project. Needless to say, and in contrast with arrangements made by the previous Government, I will see that this vast investment of public money is properly monitored and accounted for.

Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does he recall that in the days when the Ministry of Technology was responsible for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), the right hon. Gentleman said that to give an open-ended subsidy to one shipyard would undermine the viability of all other shipyards including shipyards on the Clyde? Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that this will not occur now?

Mr. Davies: Yes. I am obliged to my hon. Friend for raising the point. That was the reason why I included earlier in my speech some remarks about the study of the overall position of the industry and measures to which that might lead for the future, to reassure those concerned with that to which my hon. Friend has referred that undermining will not be accepted.

Mr. Dan Jones: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When asked by this side to give way the Minister refused to do so, and he would not allow me to ask a question affecting North-East Lancashire, but when an hon. Friend of his on his own side seeks to ask a question he immediately allows him to do so. I should like that on the record.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): The hon. Member may like that on the record, but it is still not a point of order for me.

Mr. Davies: I meant no discourtesy to the hon. Gentleman, but my hon. Friend had a problem of real concern to Scotland and to him.

Mr. Dan Jones: What about me?

Mr. Davies: If all these plans come to fruition assured employment should be provided for some 4,300 people at the


Govan complex, and this might well rise if, as is expected, the capacity of the yards is increased and the order book in due course expanded. To these would be added whatever proportion of Clydebank's present 2,500 can be brought into one or the other of the American projects. The total compares with 8,500 previously employed by U.C.S. at the time of liquidation. It contrasts, too, with a possible loss of jobs in total, both in the yards and with suppliers, of the order of 15,000 or more, which would have been the case if U.C.S. has been allowed to totter on to its almost inevitable and final dissolution, as was so strongly advocated by the right hon. Gentleman opposite.
Before finishing with the U.C.S. saga, I want to pay a well-justified tribute to one man who has played a consistently constructive and helpful rôle in trying to make this phoenix rise again. I speak of Mr. Dan McGarvey who, both as a union leader and as a promoter of shipbuilding on his native Upper Clyde, has never faltered in his determination to bring this salvage about.

Mr. Benn: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Before he finishes this point may I put a question to him? He has made a very important statement which obviously we shall want to discuss. It is difficult to do it at Questions or the end of Question Time, and I appreciate that he cannot commit himself immediately to the £35 million for the project. But we hope he will be in a position to publish as quickly as possible the full details of what he has said. When he does make a further statement, we shall naturally hope that it will apply to Clydebank and the other three yards, and that the House will have an opportunity of putting questions to him well in advance of the debate which we shall inevitably wish to have.

Dame Irene Ward: The right hon. Gentleman should thank my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Davies: I would look forward to being able to make a statement when these matters are finalised. In the meanwhile, there is the letter from the Chairman of Govan Shipbuilders Ltd. which I propose to lay in the Library, and I think it will be of assistance to the right hon. Gentleman. Also, as I said, I hope

shortly to be able to publish the report of the consultants, which will add to the information available. I hope the House will then be in possession of adequate knowledge to be able more fully to discuss the matter at a later date.

Mr. Benn: The right hon. Gentleman has paid a well deserved tribute to Mr. Dan McGarvey, but would lie not like to say anything about the people working in the yards who have fought so hard to safeguard their employment and are ready to pledge their co-operation on the basis of a satisfactory settlement?

Mr. Davies: I think that the people who are working in the yards undoubtedly have the desire—indeed, they have shown it recently—to co-operate fully with the new management in attaining what has long been the objective on the Upper Clyde, which is to have a shipbuilding industry where there is no more the great shadow of doubt which has lain over it in the past. This will depend on very great support for the management both by the workers and by the unions which represent them. I have said that the unions, as the representatives of the workers, and especially the union leader to whom I have referred, have shown nothing but willingness to help in trying to bring about this situation. I believe confidently—and I have had it borne in upon me recently in my discussions with those concerned—that the quality of work available to any shipbuilder on the Upper Clyde is still of the highest order; indeed, as high as any available anywhere. If that quality of work can be turned into the productive effort which is needed, we shall see not just a resumption of work, but a really profitable and prosperous future.

Mr. John Nott (St. Ives): Will my right hon. Friend give some indication about whether other shipyards in the country which are competing for orders with the yards to which he is now referring will also be getting £35 million, so that they may compete equally and effectively with the yards now receiving this money?

Mr. Davies: I have made it clear that I propose to look carefully at the situation of all our yards. Indeed. I am a long way down that road. I realise the problems that supporting a single group


of yards at this level can cause. But it must be realised that in the conditions obtaining today in the Upper Clyde, with the level of unemployment in West Central Scotland and with the potential that the area contains for providing a major component in the shipbuilding industry, not only in this country, but in Europe and the world, it would have been very unwise to have allowed the operation to be foreclosed. Therefore, certainly I shall take every reasonable step to ensure that no harm results to other operators in the industry, by virtue of these steps. This is a matter which I am at the moment seeking to finalise.
In conclusion, I reaffirm the Government's determination to face and overcome the monster of unemployment which besets us, and to do so both by determined and direct action, as is instanced by what I have had to say about the Upper Clyde, but not less by continuing to wage war against inflation which threatens the defenceless with distress, the country with stagnation, and the worker with becoming one more statistic in the unemployment figures.

4.33 p.m.

Mr. Peter Doig: At one point in his speech, the Secretary of State said that the Government are taking the present situation seriously. I want to relate that remark to what has happened in the Tayside area, in order to see just how seriously right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite are taking it. In that area we have at present one of the highest rates of unemployment in any urban area in the whole of Britain. At present 24·7 per cent. are unemployed in the City of Dundee, which represents almost a quarter of the available working population.
Let us see how seriously the Secretary of State is taking this serious problem. In February, 1971, we had a visit from the Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office, when we first drew his attention to the worsening situation in the Tayside area. On 9th July, 1971, we sent a deputation to St. Andrew's House to see the Minister. On 29th September, 1971, we sent a deputation to the right hon. Gentleman himself. On 9th November, 1971, the right hon. Gentleman decided to send his Minister for Trade to Dundee to investigate the

position on the spot. On 22nd December the right hon. Gentleman himself visited Scotland, where he had talks with the various local authority associations. However, he did not trouble to come to the Tayside area.
What we were seeking was the best rate of financial incentive available at the present time. We were asking, in other words, for special development area status. I shall seek to show why I believe that to be necessary and why it should have been given long ago. I catalogue these events to show how seriously the right hon. Gentleman is taking this area at present and has been for well over a year.
Nothing has been done. We have asked for a decision on whether we are to get special development area status. We have asked for it continually. It has been asked for by the Tayside Development Board, by Dundee Corporation, by all the Members of Parliament with constituencies in the area, by the chamber of commerce, and by every section of the community. Still we wait. After all this time, the right hon. Gentleman cannot make up his mind about whether we can have it. That is how seriously he takes the very serious situation in our area.
Let us examine what the Government have laid down, through another Minister, as the criteria for getting special development area status. On 21st February, in reply to a Question, the Secretary of State for Wales told the House this Government's criteria for granting special development area status. He said:
The criteria which we apply are the same as those which were applied by our predecessors. Special development area status is being given to those areas with a high number of employed as well as a high percentage of unemployment and where basic industries are declining."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st February, 1972; Vol. 831, c. 882.]
I suggest that there is nowhere in Britain that better fits that description than the Tayside area, especially the City of Dundee. The jute industry was the main industry in the area and in our city. Only a few years ago it employed 17,000 people directly. Today it employs between 8,000 and 9,000, and everyone concerned, including the chamber of commerce and the jute manufacturers, admits that the lost jobs will never come back and that, in fact, the number of


jobs is likely to decline even further. So certainly we meet the criterion of a declining industry. What is more, other industries in the area are declining also.
We have one of the highest rates of unemployment in any urban area in the whole of Britain. Clearly, we conform to the second criterion. We also have a high number of people in employment. In other words, the three conditions laid down by another Government Minister are not only being met by Dundee at the moment, but have been met by it for a considerable number of years, and we have been pressing the Minister ever since he and his right hon. Friends came to office that something should be done.
Let us see how the Government have tackled the problems. Last year, when my right hon. and hon. Friends were still in office, I was a member of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs. When we were taking evidence from Board of Trade officials I put two questions to them. I asked:
…if we look at the South-East and the percentage of new jobs that came over the four years from 1960 to 1963 and then look at the figures from 1965 to 1968, the new jobs created are almost half. Would you agree that this is a remarkable achievement in these two periods?
The answer from the official was "Yes".
I then asked:
In view of the fact that in both periods I.D.C.s were in operation. to what do you attribute the dramatic change?
The answer was:
As I say, I think it partly flows from the Government's policy of operating the control more rigorously in the South East coupled with greater pressure and encouragement of firms to move elsewhere.
That was during the period of Labour Government.
I then put this specific question to the official:
In the period 1965–1968, I.D.C. approvals in Scotland showed an increase of 113 per cent. in terms of floor space and 54 per cent. in terms of potential jobs compared with the years 1961–1964. Would you agree again that this is a remarkable change?
The answer was:
Yes.
I then asked:
Would you give the reason again why you think this remarkable change came about?
The answer was:
I think the reason is the same.

I put a further question:
In view of this fact, would you consider then that, contrary to what has been alleged in a couple of earlier questions, in fact the I.D.C. policy as operated by this Government"—
that was the Labour Government—
has been highly successful in relation to spreading jobs for the country?
The official's answer was:
I think it has had the effect of encouraging movement from the South East and Midlands to the development areas.
That piece of evidence clearly shows that the Labour Government tried to implement the policy of distributing industry fairly throughout the country and that they pursued it vigorously. This policy was successful because the Government helped it to succeed. This equally showed that although in the previous period I.D.C.s were still in operation under a Conservative Government, they had not been successful, the inference being that the Government did not want them to work. Now we are back to an exactly similar situation. The Conservative Government have relaxed their control over I.D.C. policy. We are back in the situation of high unemployment throughout the country. The present Government have not attempted to make industrial and regional policies work, and, therefore, such policies have not proved to be correct.
Up to the present the Government have refused to give us special development area status. However, I wish that the right hon. Gentleman would have the courage to say outright that he does not intend to give us such status. He should not go on and on putting off and putting off a decision by saying "We are still considering the matter", having sent his Ministers to visit the area. He has been engaged on all sorts of detailed investigations, has now had over a year in which to examine his position, but still cannot make up his mind.
We appreciate that the present unemployment figures in Dundee are inflated following the recent miners' strike, but if we look at the figures of unemployment before the strike we see that they were still at the very hight level of 9·8 per cent. When we compare this situation with that which existed under the Labour Government, we see that never at any time throughout the whole period


of Labour administration did the figure in Dundee reach 5,000 unemployed. Today that figure is 22,000. Before the strike the figure stood at 8,000 unemployed and was increasing all the time. If we look at the figures for 1971 we see that they were never once under 5,000, but have gradually climbed to 8,000 —and now, finally, to 22,000.
The average monthly unemployment figure in the City of Dundee under the Labour Government was 2,522. When one compares this figure with what happened under the Conservative Government, it can be seen what a shocking record they have. Furthermore, the Labour Government were working under an adverse balance of payments which they had to put right. The Conservatives began in office with a balance of payments surplus of £1,000 million, so that the situation ought to have been easy for them. However, they have refused to give us special development area status. Another important consideration is that we have in our area an extremely high number of disabled people who cannot find jobs. This is bound to occur when there is high unemployment. The loss of earnings is colossal, and this has had its effect in that there is less money to spend so that there is less work for people in the consumer industry.
The right hon. Gentleman may be under the impression that the further large oil strike in the North Sea will solve all our problems. Let me disabuse him of this idea. When we look at the number of jobs created by the oil industry, even in an oil refinery area, we see that there are very few. The oil industry is not particularly labour-intensive. Furthermore, there is no intention to build another new refinery anywhere in Scotland. We are told by the oil companies that the one at Grangemouth can cope with all future demand likely to arise in Scotland, so far as they can see. There will be a good deal of initial work in laying pipelines and building oil rigs, and some use of the harbours, but once all that is finished there will be nothing left to do. Therefore, if the right hon. Gentleman believes that this oil discovery in the North Sea will cure unemployment on Tayside he will have to look again and will need to look much more closely at the problem.
It must also be remembered that Dundee has a shipbuilding industry. Admittedly, it is on a much smaller scale than that at Upper Clyde, but it is an industry with a long history. The shipbuilding industry in Dundee has built substantial ships and has a good reputation for skill and ability. Our shipyard has not asked for vast sums of money to keep it going and, indeed, it never asks for anything very much. It is going through a bad period at the moment, and the Secretary of State has been told that certain orders would be suitable for this yard at present. The tenders which have been put in by the Dundee yards can be shown to be competitive. The delivery date is the best of any tender so far, and the right hon. Gentleman should see what he can do to assist in this way if he does not wish to help in any other way.
The Tayside area experienced high unemployment in the 1930s. The problem was then cured by giving financial incentives to industries to come to the area. I believe that the problem can be cured again by the adoption of similar methods. We must see what has led to the present decline: first, the Government's announcement about the ending of regional employment premiums in 1974; secondly, the abolition of investment grants and replacement by allowances—which even the chamber of commerce regards as a bad move; thirdly, the granting of special development area status to so many other areas that it is becoming difficult, if not impossible, for our area to attract firms, although it is a very attractive area for industry.
I wish to mention two firms which wanted to come to the area and said they would do so if S.D.A. status was afforded, one of these firms would have provided a thousand jobs and the other 1,200 jobs. This information was communicated to the right hon. Gentleman. Far from agreeing, his answer was that the Dundee Corporation should send the names of these two firms to his Glasgow office, which would find places for them in existing special development areas. So, after all the work done by Dundee in trying to attract firms, at considerable expense, and after contacting and arranging for them to come to the area provided that this assurance was given it was then told, "Send on the names and we will


direct them somewhere else". The areas to which they would be directed are better off as regards employment and their future prospects are better than those of the Tayside area so long as this Government are in power.
If this is the kind of encouragement which the right hon. Gentleman gives areas which are trying to help themselves, I do not know how he can expect to receive any gratitude from them. I ask him, or, better still, the Prime Minister, to look urgently at the whole question of how the Tayside area has been and still is being handled.

4.51 p.m.

Mr. Roger White: I appreciate that time is short for this debate. Therefore, I will be brief.
When I saw the Opposition's Motion on the Order Paper I wondered whether this was becoming a monthly "beat the Government" Motion rather than a sincere attempt to meet the problem.
The latest figures for unemployment, although disguised by the recent dispute in the coal industry, indicate, I trust, a chink of light in the overall trend. Unemployment in the South-East of England, and North Kent in particular, whilst in no way comparable with the Midlands, the North and Scotland, means just as much to the man who is unemployed as if he were living in Newcastle or Glasgow. In Northfleet and Gravesend the unemployed feel that as deeply as anyone else.
The basic industries in my part of North Kent, as I have reminded the House before, are cement and paper. The paper industry has suffered a long period of retrenchment, and manufacturers are still awaiting the outcome of the protracted discussions between the Government, our E.F.T.A. partners and the E.E.C. The general view now held is that time is not by any means on our side. Therefore, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to expedite the arrangements concerning the paper industry with the E.F.T.A. countries and the E.E.C. as soon as possible.
Added to that, there is the well known background in our part of England of being outside any development or intermediate development area status. It is a high-cost travel-to-work area which has immense industrial and commercial frus-

trations. The local authorities and Members of Parliament have met the Department of Trade and Industry over a period and have had assurances of a flexible attitude in the award of I.D.Cs for office development.
Last year the Kent County Council, to its great credit, appointed an employment and liaison officer. In Gravesend the Department of Employment is to experiment with a local labour intelligence service in North-West Kent in obtaining information regarding redundancies, market influences, industrial activity, and so on, and this information will be examined in depth. Therefore, I should like to pay tribute to the local authorities and to the local officers of the Department of Employment for the efforts which they are making.
None the less, there are one or two points of a local character to which I should like to draw the Government's attention. In both my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Trew) work is in progress on the construction of two large power stations, one on the Isle of Grain and the other at Littlebrook.
On 1st July, 1970, I asked whether the Central Electricity Generating Board would ensure the maximum use of local labour. I was informed that the matter rested between the board and the contractors. Notwithstanding those words of encouragement, the local officers of the Department of Employment have been able, with contractors, to assist on many of the sites where these large industrial plants are being built. Unfortunately, reports are now circulating locally—I have written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about this matter—that the Central Electricity Generating Board is to appoint a separate agency to be responsible for further recruitment. The fears expressed locally are that this agency will go outside our area to recruit labour irrespective of the local skills available. I draw this matter to the attention of the Under-Secretary because there is considerable anxiety not only in my constituency but in neighbouring constituencies, where local skills are available and should be used in future.
In the context of the Central Electricity Generating Board, I draw my hon. Friend's attention to a Question by my


hon. Friend the Member for Dartford about the Littlebrook power station. Apparently the C.E.G.B., wishing to expand this plant, had planning consent as long ago as October, 1970, but is still awaiting confirmation from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Indeed, on 31st January this year my hon. Friend announced that the matter was still being studied. I remind him and the Government that some 2,000 jobs are available on this site, and they affect not only my constituents but those of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford. Therefore, an announcement on that project is regarded as essential.
Apart from the paper and cement industries, the construction industry comes very much into mind in my part of the South-East. On 1st December last year the Construction Industry Training Board announced a boost for Kent building workers with a new group called the Weald Construction Training Group, consisting of 19 major Kent building firms covering 1,850 employees. Naturally, I welcome this project, but most of the builders concerned in this project are a long way from my area. We would like to see this kind of thing extended; for example, to places such as Dartford, Northfleet, Gravesend and the Medway towns.
In the light of an expanding economy towards the Continent of Europe, we have a big and important part to play in industry, commerce and trade. The belief of the local authorities and of all those concerned in our area is that a new growth of what we would term "seed bed" industries is required and that we should not merely rely upon large industrial complexes such as cement, paper, large power stations and oil refineries. We need small light engineering firms set up along the Thames and the Medway. Therefore, I hope that the Government will not forget that in the enlarged Community of the E.E.C. we shall probably be part of the launching pad which will set this country forth into the 1970s and 1980s on the industrial growth and potential which I am sure we require.
I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to bear in mind that, because areas such as the South-East of England do not qualify for development or intermediate

area status, we have an important part to play in the economy. We cannot allow our basic industries to run down, and we want to encourage new industries.
I look forward to my hon. Friend's reply in the context of what I have said, because I am convinced that it is only by looking at the different areas of this country in the context of the nation as a whole that we shall be able to overcome the difficult and understandable concern which we all have for unemployment.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. Bob Brown (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for what he said this afternoon about my constituent Mr. Dan McGarvey, because it goes without saying that the lot of Clyde-side and, more appropriately, the future of Clydeside would be in the gravest doubt had it not been for the tenacity and determination of Dan McGarvey to give life to shipbuilding on the Upper Clyde.
The Minister's statement this afternoon about the U.C.S. was a belated recognition of the difficulties of the British shipbuilding industry vis-à-vis the shipbuilding industries of other nations. It seems remarkable, to say the least, that the Government had to be in office for 20 months before learning that the shipbuilding industry internationally is not a free-for-all private enterprise baby at all; that shipbuilding throughout the world is buttressed by the various Governments. The Government's recognition of the industry's problems is belated, but perhaps it is a case of better late than never.
One might ask whether, had the Government discarded their noninterventionist and "lame duck" policies some months ago, it would have been necessary to pour this vast sum of £35 million into U.C.S.

Mr. A. E. Cooper: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I draw attention to the fact that there is not a quorum present?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: There is no question of a quorum, because we cannot any more be counted out.

Mr. Brown: One must ask whether this injection of £35 million would have been necessary, but recognition by the Government, even at this late stage, that


the shipbuilding industry has to be buttressed by them brings me to my own native area.
On the Tyne there is the Swann Hunter group. That group, like every other shipbuilding group in the country, is not without its problems, but the problems are not of its own making. Many of them are the direct result of the policies that have been pursued by the Government during the last 20 months. Sir John Hunter, the Chairman of the Swann Hunter Group, is a man to whom I should not be unkind if I were to suggest that he was never noted for his sympathy towards the Labour Government, and never noted for publicly stating on Tyneside any high praise for that Government.
I remember being at the launch of a major ship, the E.S.S.O. "Northumbria". When the Princess had done her job we went in for a "nosh". After lunch the Princess made a nice speech, which we all enjoyed. Sir John then intervened, and he had not a kind word to say about the intervention in the yard by the then Government which created the opportunity for that fine ship to be built. It was left to the chairman of the shipowners—as with the Government today —belatedly to recognise the fact that the Government of the day were playing a tremendous part in the reorganisation and restructuring of the industry. Clearly, I have to ask—and I hope that we shall be given some indication of this by the Government this evening—whether, if Swann Hunter were to run into financial difficulties next year, we could hope for some Government support for the Tyne.
The difficulties to which I referred earlier of the British shipbuilding industry are the direct result of the Government's policies in connection with the grant system, and the sooner the Government realise that non-intervention in industry across the board does not pay, and the sooner they realise the error of their ways in what they have done about regional policies, the better it will be for industry generally in the regions, and the shipbuilding industry in particular.
The only thing for which the Government can claim credit is having dismembered regional policies. One cannot think of any reason why, almost immediately after the General Election, the Government should have been so determined to step in and wipe out investment

grants and replace them by investment allowances. I have heard no real reason advanced for that being done, but I give the Government credit for having done it at a stroke.
Let there be no doubt that that one decision has cost not only the shipbuilding industry but all industries in our development areas dearly, and has done tremendous harm to future confidence in the development areas. It must be remembered that development area policy means the building up of confidence in the regions. That is why I sincerely hope that we shall hear no more of the stock answer from that Dispatch Box that development area policy is being urgently reviewed by the Government. We have been told that for the last 20 months.

Mr. T. W. Urwin: My hon. Friend having asked why there has been such a determination to reduce the incentives available to development areas since June, 1970, would he accept that it is due largely to the insane desire of the Government to save money? Would he agree that the Government's major achievement so far has been the creation of nearly ½ million unemployed? Would he further accept that in his nationwide broadcast last night the Prime Minister said not a word about unemployment?

Mr. Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, because there is no doubt that the Government's prime purpose immediately after 18th June, 1970, was to reduce public expenditure, and we had the classic example today of the determination of the Department of Trade and Industry not to intervene in the shipbuilding industry after having brought about a situation in which U.C.S. was asking for £6 million. A sum of £5 million had already been poured in during the previous 12 months to keep it going. Now we have this indication of £35 million being necessary. Whatever the right hon. Gentleman says about monitoring and keeping an eye on how this public money is expended, the fact is that he has no guarantee that within three years the company will be solvent.
To come to my hon. Friend's last point, no one can deny that, whether they were temporarily stopped or permanently stopped, last week's unemployment figure was 1·6 million. The situation in my


area, with nearly 95,000 unemployed, is a disgrace and a shame, and the responsibility for it rests on the Tory Government.
I referred earlier to the lack of confidence in the regions. The worst thing of all in the North-East of England is the complete lack of confidence in the ability of the Government to reverse the trend which they set in motion with such indecent haste immediately after 18th June, 1970. It is not good enough to thump the Box and say, "We are urgently reviewing regional policy". The Minister's hon. Friend has said the same thing until I am tired of hearing him say it. No Government are reasonably entitled to claim that they are urgently reviewing something when they have been saying that for 18 months. An urgent review would take 18 weeks rather than 18 months. I say this with some knowledge of how fast the Government machine works. I hope that the Minister will say that within days rather than weeks or months there will be a specific announcement on a new regional policy.

5.11 p.m.

Mr. Robert Redmond: I should like to comment on the last point made by the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown). I have every sympathy with this. I too am very anxious to see a new regional policy promulgated, but it should be the right one. I am prepared to wait another month or two to get it right. We do not want it hastily done.
Tributes have been paid to one of the union leaders in the shipbuilding industry. My area is mainly concerned with the textile industry, which has had a far rawer deal than shipbuilding. I join many other people in paying tribute to the leaders of the textile unions, who have shown such a responsible attitude in such difficult circumstances.
The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) made a plea for special development area, instead of development area, status. My area has no status at all. It is something between a development area and an intermediate area. I have every sympathy with what the hon. Member said, although I think that my area has suffered worse than his.
The widening of development and intermediate areas will not be of any use

until industry gets on the move. This is why I listened with absolute fascination to the speech of the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). It was an odd speech, notable for its terminological and technological inexactitudes and its advocacy of policies which have already been seen to fail horribly.
In his great discourse and wide-ranging speech, the right hon. Gentleman did not mention Rhodesia or metrication. He might have mentioned South Africa. If his Government had encouraged the South Africans to purchase the Nimrod aircraft, which is not exactly a warlike instrument, there would be 7,000 more jobs in the North-West.

Mr. Norman Buchan: The words "terminological inexactitude" have a specific meaning in this House. Would the hon. Gentleman say exactly what he means, so that one can reply to him?

Mr. Redmond: I am going to deal with the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He spoke about the shake-out continuing. Does he mean the one that he started when he was Minister of Technology? In my constituency, the trade union leaders and others have been continually critical to me of the takeovers and mergers which began between 1964 and 1970, which have always been followed by rationalisation and, so far as we can see, a loss of jobs.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the Common Market. I take extreme exception to what he said. I do not claim to be an expert on the Common Market, nor on the European Communities Bill, but I have been utterly convinced for years of the need to join the Common Market in the interests of my constituency and of jobs there. Some ten years ago, when the Macmillan Government were negotiating for entry, I had the honour to be Chairman of the North-Western Export Club, an organisation comprising small firms interested in exporting. We did a great study of whether it was to the advantage of small firms for this country to be in the Common Market.
I went through exactly the same exercise last autumn in Bolton, asking firms the same question and using the papers that I had used in the studies of ten years before. The answer came back


strongly and forcibly that it would be in the interests of the employment of the people of Bolton that Britain should be a member of the Common Market as soon as possible.
For a former Minister of Technology to suggest that employment is threatened by our membership shows that he has not made the study of industry that he should have made. For the sake of jobs in my constituency, I have voted the way I have.

Mr. John Biffen: Before my hon. Friend leaves this interesting and necessarily somewhat controversial aspect of his speech, could he also confirm that the trade prospects which he foresees in the Common Market could still be there even if one were to take a somewhat different view of Clause 2 of the European Communities Bill than now seems evident?

Mr. Redmond: I will quote one small firm in Bolton which convinced me that we are right about the Common Market. This firm said, "If you will get us into the Common Market, we will be employing three times as many people as we are now within three or four years." [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) knows something of my constituency, because his is nearby, but I do not think that he has asked that sort of question of the firms that I have asked.

Mr. J. T. Price: Since the hon. Gentleman was good enough to refer to me, I would only say that one small firm does not make a Bolton summer.

Mr. Redmond: I gave that small firm as an example and I will send the hon. Gentleman a verbatim copy of the speech that I have made in my constituency. Then he will see the full story.
The Secretary of State spoke about the problem caused by the rundown of stocks. We must take this very urgently into consideration, particularly in relation to purchase tax stocks, with the onset of value added tax. I hope that, in the interests of employment, the Chancellor will produce an answer to this question when he presents his Budget. This problem was put clearly to me by a wholesale stationer in my constituency

over the weekend. Jobs are threatened unless we can get over that difficulty.
This is an odd time to be having this debate with the upheaval and distortion caused by the coal strike. We might take particular note of the figures issued the other day—that is, the rise in the number of jobs vacant. The Opposition might have welcomed this, however small an indication it is.
I wonder how relevant the figures are which we get from the Department of Employment. I see every night in my local newspaper pages and pages of jobs vacant. I wish that I had the facilities to do the research on these things and to analyse the background. I should like to know whether all the firms which advertise notify these vacancies to the Department. In other words, are they in the figures? If they have done so, what reactions did they get? How many applications resulted? Having advertised, what response have they had from the advertisement? Finally, have the jobs been filled, either as a result of approaching the Department or as a result of the advertisement?
I hope that, if I am honoured by any space in my local newspaper as a result of this speech, some firms will write to tell me what the position is. This leads me to ask whether we are being mesmerised by unemployment percentages. I quote some figures for my own travel-to-work area. We have a population of 261,000, covering eight local authorities. This gives a working population of 116,000. We are said to have an unemployment figure of 6·4 per cent.—or to have had that figure until recent figures were announced. This represents 6,800 people. Another travel-to-work area, which is in a development area, has 9½per cent. unemployed. But, applying the same calculation as the one I have just made, the number of jobs wanted is 3,868.
Of those two areas, which needs help more? Is it the area like my own which is not in a development area or an intermediate area, or that which is in the development area? Or would it be better to think again and have a review? That is what I hope will come from the Department of Trade and Industry. I hope that we shall get some change in policy, because one of the things that has been


very galling to people in Scotland and parts of Lancashire, including mine, is that every time the Department of the Environment produces legislation to help infrastructure, the Department ties it to the areas nominated by the Department of Trade and Industry for development area, special development area or intermediate area status.
On the Second Reading of the Housing Bill last year I spoke critically, but I could not and would not have opposed it then. The Housing Act gave money to areas which did not need it as much as the areas which have no status. In the light of trends that have occurred since that Bill received its Second Reading, if a similar piece of legislation came forward, I should be bound to oppose it and to take my opposition into the Lobby.
For reasons which I have explained to you, Mr. Speaker, it is a pity that I cannot be present for the winding up speeches. However, I hope that my hon. Friend will deal with that point.

5.22 p.m.

Mr. Dan Jones: When I rose on a point of order about the Minister's copious references to Scotland, I should make it perfectly plain that I meant no injury to Scotland as such. But I have every right to take exception to the fact that in the previous debate as well as in this debate, the Minister in question made no references to Burnley and North-East Lancashire. Hon. Members may question, "Why references to Burnley and North-East Lancashire?" I intend to say why. It may quite well be that Ministers think of Burnley still as an old cotton town. That is manifestly wrong. It is a town that has, in turn, made remarkable contributions to the most sophisticated form of engineering. The first jet engine ever produced for the aircraft industry was produced in Burnley, and for every jet engine since then, up to and including those for Concorde, a good deal of the gas turbines were made in Burnley. A substantial portion of the research on perhaps the finest aero-engine in the world, the RB 211, was conducted in North-East Lancashire. For that reason, we in Burnley and North-East Lancashire, who have suffered through the years so much industrial stagnation of one kind or another and have now got into existence

over the last two decades a thrusting new industry, find ourselves again with a form of stagnation. It is time, and more than time, that our voice was heard here, with that of Scotland.
I take no exception to the fact that these references to Scotland were made in the way they were. But my references must also be made. I shall make further references to Scotland before I conclude my speech, which I intend to do within 10 minutes.
It occurs to me that, perhaps, it is another set of figures that has impressed the present Government; that is, the fact that we have only an average unemployment rate in Burnley and North-East Lancashire, if one concludes that those figures are insufficient of analysis. I intend to tell the House, and particularly the Under-Secretary, that here again Ministers are guilty of a very superficial examination of the problem affecting Burnley and North-East Lancashire. At one time the population of Burnley was 120,000. To day it is only just over 70,000. I question very much whether there is any area of Britain that has progressively lost its population to the same extent. The people that we lose are usually the young, who have the greatest contribution to make.
The present Mr. Speaker was with me at a meeting—the faces of some hon. Members opposite are looking surprised. I refer to the present Mr. Speaker when he was occupying the benches. He was present with me at a meeting when these figures were trotted out. The increase from the early 1950s to 1964 was 15 per cent. in the insured population, but for precisely the same period there was a decrease in the insured population of Burnley of about 14 per cent. As it was increasing in the nation generally, it was coming dismally down in Burnley and North-East Lancashire.
Before I came to the House, for about 20 years I was an official of the A.E.U. I was engaged, on instructions from our executive council, in the areas of Bath, Gloucester, Cheltenham and areas of that kind. My job was to recruit new people in the engineering industry into the A.E.U. I was considered to be doing a rather successful job. But the truth is that I did not then see the significance of my work, because new factories were being built and new towns were coming into existence, and the people concerned


were coming from the North, from Scotland and from South Wales. This was a time when we had the "set the people free" philosophy. In short, industrialists were then allowed to do what the hell they liked, and to blazes with the basic economic needs of the country.
One of the factors, although the present Government have never yet tumbled to it, is that in expanding our economy the terrible danger, which has been proved over and over again, is that one gets overheating in the Midlands and the South before one even gets lukewarm such areas as the North, Scotland, South Wales and certainly the North-East. Can one wonder that we reached this wretched imbalance? The references made to trade unions today in terms of unemployment drew ironic smiles from hon. Members opposite. Some of the smiles are returning now. I notice them. If hon. Members opposite were unemployed, the smiles would soon vanish. I have been unemployed and I know what I am talking about. It is the greatest social scourge that any Government could perpetrate on society. What the blazes are hon. Members opposite laughing at? It is a pity that some of them could not join the ranks.

Mr. Redmond: Mr. Redmond rose—

Mr. Jones: I will give way when I have finished on this point. If the Treasury Ministers could somehow or other be translated to the queues of the unemployed and had to endure the boredom and emptiness of life, and proceed to live on what they received across the counter, unemployment in Britain would not last more than two or three weeks.

Mr. Redmond: The hon. Gentleman does not have a monopoly of experience of unemployment. Some of us have found it and we do not laugh about the subject.

Mr. Jones: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not have a monopoly of knowledge of unemployment: 1·6 million people have a more intimate knowledge of it than I do.

Mr. Cooper: The Motion is virtually one of censure, but on the Opposition side only 15 Members are present out of about 250.

Mr. Jones: I have sufficient experience of the House to know that the hon.

Gentleman has made a political point rather than a contribution. The Motion would lose none of its significance if there were only two or three of us present.
I turn from the general question of the scourge of unemployment to my own area of Burnley and North-East Lancashire. The Minister said that the Government are to invest £35 million more on the Clyde. Like my Scottish colleagues, I rejoice at that handsome contribution to solving a problem which needs an equitable solution.
I wish £1 million of that money, or an additional £1 million, were to be invested in Burnley and North-East Lancashire. I doubt if there is a more industrious area in the country. On Saturday morning an old lady who is 80 next birthday entered my "surgery", as we politicians wrongly call it. I asked her how I could help her. I was taken aback when she said, "Mr. Jones, I should like you to find me a job".
That is typical of the people of the area. It is wrong that an area like that, with a potential such as I have described, should be allowed to go to seed. I have appealed to various Ministers to visit the area, to study what we produce and the research that goes on there, and to make an estimation of the character of the people there. I assure Ministers that whatever money the Government spend in Burnley and North-East Lancashire will be in the nature of an investment rather than of expenditure.

Mr. William Baxter: To keep the record straight, and in view of the remarks by the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Redmond), may I point out that there are only 12 Members on the Government benches?

Mr. Jones: I am sufficient of a campaigner in the House to realise that that is another political point. I am much more concerned with the principle than with the arithmetic.
I invite the Ministers responsible for dealing with this matter to come to Burnley and North-East Lancashire. At one time or another nearly the whole of the Labour Cabinet visited Burnley to make on the spot assessments. It is significant that up till about June, 1970, we were in the happy position that every


reputable employer was looking for labour and our population figures were rising agreeably. Today the reverse is the case. People are unemployed in higher numbers than we think tolerable. Young people and people who have been trained in the neighbourhood are leaving the area. It is grey stagnation.
Leaving aside political considerations, Lancashire folk have a reputation for kindness, courtesy, and generosity. They would put to one side the undoubted political partisanship they show on ordinary occasions and they would ensure that whichever Minister made that necessary journey was given a very good welcome.
I appeal to Ministers not to treat us, as they have, since 1970, as an industrial leper colony. We deserve much better. I make this appeal knowing full well that any assistance given by the Government would repay the nation handsomely. For that reason, I have every right, on human as well as on economic grounds, to make this appeal. I sincerly hope that it will be responded to.

5.36 p.m.

Mr. Edward Taylor: I am sure that the House will have been very impressed by the advocacy of the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) of the problems of his constituency, which I hope will be resolved.
I want to make a short speech, because what I think was a very important announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was received in virtual peace and quietness. Members from the West of Scotland regard my right hon. Friend's statement about the Upper Clyde as magnificent news which will bring real hope to an area which has suffered so much gloom and despondency. I know that my right hon. Friend has spent a great deal of time looking into all the aspects of this very vexed problem. Everyone in the West of Scotland will be grateful and delighted at the result of his endeavours.
It is important news, because 15,000 extra unemployed people, which would have been the result if Upper Clyde had been allowed to collapse, would have been a catastrophe. In an area where there is more unemployment than any

other area of the country, my right hon. Friend's announcement about the extra investment and extra cash aid will be a real and effective answer to those who say that the Government do not care about Scotland's problems.
Special tribute should be paid to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland for the patient endeavours he has made in helping to have this decision brought about. The decision does not guarantee success to Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, but it gives it a reasonable chance to succeed, for the first time in many years. First, it gives a chance for the decks to be cleared on the outstanding financial burdens by the undertaking that £17 million will be provided towards wiping off the debts which have been inherited.
The second and most important matter is the £18 million of investment which is being allowed for the future. All of us know that the yards will not have a real chance of success unless a great deal of money is spent—for example, on new drainage. I hope that the £18 million will give the yards a much better chance.
It was clear from what my right hon. Friend said about the financial situation that the various patching jobs have been virtually a waste of money and that what needs to be done is to deal with the problem effectively or not at all.
I do not in any way underestimate the sincere efforts which were made by the previous Government. However, I think that the right step has been taken now, and I congratulate my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Employment and the Secretary of State for Scotland on what I see as a major achievement which will bring real happiness to the West of Scotland. When will the company be in a position to take on new orders? How urgent is the orders situation? Hon. Members on both sides will agree with the Government's tribute to Mr. Dan McGarvey. We should like to know whether agreement has been reached on the working arrangements.
Quite apart from the problem of Upper Clyde, the House will agree with what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about the need for a longterm policy on shipbuilding. When some of my hon. Friends complain from time


to time about the assistance given to shipbuilding they forget that it is in a unique situation in that it has to face world competition without the protection of tariff barriers and without levy assistance, from which many other industries in this country benefit. A crazy system of competition exists in the world today. An agreement on restricting assistance to shipbuilding would certainly put the industry on a much sounder footing, and we look forward very much to legislation on that.
I have two further questions on the general situation in Scotland which is very serious and which I hope will be overcome. Has any progress been made in the inquiries into special development area grant arrangements? We have the problem that local firms, seeking to expand and provide jobs, are not given the opportunity of having the grants, which are available only to firms outside Scotland to establish themselves in Scotland. This has created anomalies, and it prevents some local firms from expanding as much as they could. Has any progress been made in the matter? In particular, what steps are being taken to improve the actual mechanics of grant applications? Local firms object to not being told why the grant has not been given, and they feel that an independent appeal procedure would be preferable.
Has progress been made on the steel situation in Scotland? We are waiting for the report of the Steering Group which is looking into the long-term investment plans of the Scottish steel industry. This will be a crucial report for the Hunterston development. It will be essential to have a source of cheap steel, particularly bearing in mind that we shall have to adopt the European Coal and Steel Community policy, which, without Hunterston, could be very disadvantageous to Scotland.
I end by repeating how delighted I and other hon. Members from the West of Scotland are with my right hon. Friend's announcement on Upper Clyde.

5.42 p.m.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Like the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor), I welcome the statement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on the £35 million which is now, we understand, to go to

three of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders yards. If some of us have been less than joyous in our reception of the announcement it is partly because we wonder at the way in which the Secretary of State has approached the problem. I do not want to add to his problems or to make it difficult for his hon. Friends to support him in his policy of providing £35 million. But it is strange that it was necessary to withhold the £6 million so many months ago, to force the yards into liquidation, to pass through the trauma of month after month, week after week, searching and probing for information and money while the shop stewards in the yards were doing so much to keep alive the hopes of the workers.
Would not a better policy have been to give the £6 million then and have an urgent examination of the kind which has been carried out? The Secretary of State must not think that in the intervening months no further damage has been done to the yards' prospects. It has been impossible to secure orders for new ships while this sword has been hanging over them.
The Secretary of State should not get away with it. He has been paid all sorts of fulsome tributes for the £35 million, but he has come forward with it rather late—I suppose better late than never—and to some extent rather grudgingly, because he said he was unable to tie the whole matter up today. I am glad, however, that at long last prospects for the three yards at least are reasonable. That is certainly something to be welcomed in view of the tremendous problems facing Scotland.
I wish to make a passing reference to a rather oblique phrase used by the Secretary of State about the coal dispute. People outside the House sometimes wonder at the kind of economics and logic that we apply to the nation's affairs. We are told that the dispute has cost the National Coal Board over £100 million, excluding the cost of the settlement itself, and we do not know how much it has cost industry in lost production. Is it not rather odd that we should force upon the country a situation involving a loss by the board of at least £100 million, when the total eventual settlement is less than the amount of lost sales? Would it not have been far better to tackle the problem of the miners' wages before they


went on strike? At least the board would have been £100 million better off, even if the claim had been met in full.
To go through this kind of trauma which happens every time public industries are involved in a wage dispute —the Post Office, the cleansing workers and now the miners—and to inflict this damage in the name of an apparently non-existent incomes policy, is the policy of bedlam. It is time for a change of Government and a change of policy.
Hon. Members opposite have spoken about unemployment as if it is something new which developed only in the last five years, especially in Scotland. They comment about what happened under the last Labour Government and point to the unemployment levels then. But Scotland has been suffering from unemployment for over 20 years. The long-term trends show a peak of unemployment. Almost regularly every five years there is an increase to a new peak, but when the figures drop back down they never fall to the lowest level of the previous five years. They have shown a steady increase over the last 20 years.
Nothing the Government have done has improved the situation. They may boast about how much they have put into the economy and about their pump-priming. But the simple fact is that it is not working because there is no confidence in the Government. Confidence is lacking because even when people make very modest propositions to assist the economic prospects of development areas, the money has to be dragged out of the Government, every ha'penny squeezed out. The penny-pinching over ports development has to be seen to be believed. We all talk about the great oil boom and the benefits which will come from oil to the North-East of Scotland. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) is wrong when he says that the benefits are transitional and that they may only last for five or six years before disappearing when the initial investment has passed by.
There must be investment in infrastructure, and it is about time the Government started to give the ports money without going through the paraphernalia of determining cost-effectiveness, asking

whether the development will be profitable and whether it can be financed out of the port's own investment. It is significant that for the Aberdeen Harbour Board to develop the commercial side of the harbour for the benefit of the oil industry, to try to bring some of the benefits of the oil into the North-East, it has had to delay desirable fishing developments at the harbour. It cannot be reasonable economics for public service developments which have been planned for a long time to be held back to make way for another industry simply to satisfy the Government's financial requirements.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine): The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the Government have raised from £500,000 to £1 million the ceiling below which ports do not need to apply to the central Government for any form of sanction, so ports are a great deal freer now to get on with their own expansion than they were hitherto.

Mr. Hughes: That is irrelevant. I am aware that ports have the authority to increase their borrowing powers without reference to the hon. Gentleman's Department, but that does not mean that necessary and desirable improvements are not being held back in one sector because of the demands of a new sector that no one could plan for.
If the Government want to help the North-East of Scotland, they can show their confidence by moving the Petroleum Department of the Department of Trade and Industry to Aberdeen. This suggestion is non-political. It has been made by the Press and Chamber of Commerce apart from political parties.
I am tired of seeing industries come to Scotland and pick up the benefits, the grants and loans and the differential, and then disappear when the going gets tough. They are modern freebooters who come and take all they can and then get out. That is not proper investment in Scotland. We all want investment, and we try to see that some of the investment resulting from the oil revenues goes into regional development. I am speaking of the development of Scotland, Wales and the North of England. I hope that the Government will agree, even though the Treasury may object.
What we really want in Scotland is public investment. If ever there were proof that the present economic system has failed the nation, it is to be seen in the unemployment position in Scotland. The industries that have come to Scotland have been concerned only about profit, and if they do not get their profit they go.
It is pretty sad to be told that the Government are trying to attract investment from West Germany to build a steel complex in Scotland. I know that it would be capital investment which cannot be readily moved, but it is a sorry thing if we cannot generate our own capital. I hope that we obtain that investment.
There should be a social content in industry, and as long as the present economic system operates we shall not be able to have it. I want public ownership in the interests of all our people. The sooner we get it, the better. I am sorry that I cannot develop that point further in this short debate. Many of my hon. Friends wish to speak, and I have had experience of being kept out of a debate by hon. Members who have spoken far too long.
The catastrophic unemployment in Scotland condemns the present Government. The people of Scotland condemn them. Only when we adopt a system that operates the economy for the benefit of the people, and not just those who wish to make a profit, shall we have a long-lasting solution to the unemployment problem in Scotland.

5.54 p.m.

Mr. John Stokes: I admire the sincerity of Labour hon. Members who have spoken, but I hope they will not think that no Conservative Member has had considerable experience of industry and commerce and of employment and unemployment. I started my career in the 1930s, when unemployment was still high.
I want to discuss the problem in as non-partisan a spirit as I can. In the end it is not we politicians who will solve the problem by talking. It will be done by management and the men and women in British industry and commerce.
Apart from another reduction in Bank Rate and the further tax reductions that we all expect, the Government have probably done just about enough to

stimulate the economy. I admit that what is still wanted is confidence, the confidence of industry to invest. Companies have been so debilitated by inflation, over-taxation and needless Government interference that they are naturally hesitant about committing large sums out of reduced profits for the new factories and plant and machinery we all want to see. Moreover, they will not produce more goods without being sure of a market for them. Sometimes I feel that those on the production side of industry who clamour for jobs forget that there must be a sales outlet, that there must be customers before goods or services can be produced.
Those who choose an industrial job, usually with a higher than average wage, must realise that there is bound to be risk in private enterprise. The essence of business is risk. Those who want security should choose the public service, where the wage rate may be lower but the security is greater. The public service can also attract those who wish to serve their country. A number of public services cannot find enough men and women. I am thinking of the Navy, the Army, the Air Force—[An HON. MEMBER: "Back to the 1930s."]—the police, the prison service and nursing. They are all honourable professions, and I do not know why Labour hon. Members interrupt.
I wish to devote the remaining part of my speech to a new topic. I am astonished that no hon. Member has yet mentioned the effect of immigration on employment. We are told that we are living in an age of increasing leisure and that the service industries will absorb more and more people. For example, more and more hotels are being built because of the tourist boom, but I am told that the industry cannot find enough staff to man them. Therefore, it is necessary to call in Spanish waiters and chambermaids and other immigrants.
In the 1930s those who were thrown out of work from the factories could often find jobs in the service industries, such as the railways, road transport, hotels and catering. Today those opportunities are blocked by the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have come here since the 1950s and 1960s. The matter requires further study. As the total number of immigrants in this crowded island approaches 2 million, and as they are still entering the country at the rate of over


40,000 a year, surely common prudence demands—

Mr. Kenneth Lomas: Mr. Kenneth Lomas (Huddersfield, West) rose—

Mr. Stokes: I will not give way, because I must get on. Surely there must be a pause, if not a halt, if we are not to inflict further damage upon our own indigenous working population? Everyone is aware of the over-manning there has been in industry over the past 20 years, and the recent shake-out had to come sooner or later. What some people do not realise, or will not realise, is that the large numbers of immigrants we allowed to enter the country in the 1950s and 1960s encouraged some employers to be extravagant and wasteful with labour. We do not know a great deal about this subject, but I would hazard a guess that quite a high proportion of the unemployed are immigrants. I wonder whether the Department of Employment can discover the figures, since these would be helpful to employers and trade unionists alike as well as to the immigrants themselves.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Mr. Robert Hughes rose—

Mr. Stokes: I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I heard him in silence. Certainly, the present employment situation makes the need for voluntary repatriation of immigrants more urgent than ever, and we must never forget that there is a crying need for the skills and energies of these immigrants in their own homelands—in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Mr. Ray Carter (Birmingham, North-fields): Squalid.

Mr. Stokes: Hon. Members opposite might consider modifying their pro-immigrant bias and do more to look after their own countrymen. No doubt it has not escaped notice in the House that the Common Market countries have recently been quick to put up barriers against our own immigrants. I suggest that it is only common sense and prudence that we should stop all future immigration and encourage all those immigrant workers who want to go back and join their families and help build up their own countries to do so.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I understand that it is proposed that the Front Bench speeches should start at 6.30. I should like to call at least three more back-bench speakers before then if I can.

6.3 p.m.

Mr. T. W. Urwin: It is not surprising in such a debate, when we are addressing ourselves to the urgent national problem of well over 1 million unemployed, that almost without exception speakers so far have addressed themselves also to the serious regional aspects of the overall problem. We can all show our regional scars, even without being invited to. I would say to hon. Members opposite that, despite the worsening situation in the country as a whole, there will continue for about as far ahead as one can see the serious and almost ineradicable problems of unemployment in the development areas. It is, therefore, right and proper that attempts should be made on this side of the House to indict the Government for the policies they have put in train and equally for their discarding, because of political dogma, of regional incentives to attract new industries into development areas—an abandonment which has largely contributed to the present situation. Week after week since June, 1970, we have begged, pleaded, cajoled and used all the facilities available to us to get a statement from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry following his extensive revision of regional policy but, 20 months later, we still do not know what the Government have in mind for the development areas.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor) berated the Opposition for not giving a warmer welcome to the right hon. Gentleman's statement about the investment proposed in U.C.S. Some of these statements by the Government are made in debate, thus tending to preclude the possibility of questions. That is not the sort of behaviour expected in Parliament from people holding such high office. If it is any consolation to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, I remind him that the Secretary of State for the Environment is equally to be condemned for using the same expedient, even in a regional debate. For example, in a debate on the Northern Region some time ago, the Secretary of State for the Environment


announced £45 million extra expenditure on improvement grants. It is far better for statements to be made at the appropriate time so that they can be questioned and critically examined by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
The indictment of the Government is heightened when we think of the possible repercussive effects of the recent coal strike. One cannot lightly disregard the possibility that, apart from the passing phase of additional unemployment arising from the national emergency, further difficulties may ensue even after the miners have, happily, returned to work.
Last night, the Prime Minister quite properly spoke on television about the difficult situation facing the country. I was nevertheless more than surprised not to hear him utter one word about the factors which led to the coal strike. Certainly one might have expected him to refer to the fact that, had it not been for Government intervention, the strike might have been averted, because the offer which was made eventually could have been made earlier. It was equally surprising, in view of the extremely serious unemployment problem, that the Prime Minister made no reference to the frustrations which the unemployed feel—and I remind the House that many of us on this side have had personal bitter experience of unemployment ourselves. Nor did the right hon. Gentleman attempt to address himself to finding answers to the problem.
In this respect, both the Prime Minister and the Government stand indicted until they begin to think much more objectively about finding new policies. I endorse the sentiment, expressed by hon. Members on both sides, about the necessity, which I hope the Secretary of State has taken on board, to extend to indigenous firms the full range of incentives available in development areas so that they can more fully participate in the generation of new job opportunities and thereby help to reduce the terrible scourge of unemployment.
The development areas all face a problem—not a new one—which is escalating almost week by week. The lesser incentives available mean that not only are we getting fewer inquiries from firms, and therefore not the same intake of new firms into development areas, but we are losing firms already in the development

areas which are finding it a hard struggle to keep going. This applies to many small firms. At a time of less prosperity, a number of such firms tend to leave for more affluent areas of the country—for example, some firms have their facilities withdrawn back to the parent company elsewhere. We can all cite examples of job opportunities and expansion opportunities lost to firms in the development areas because of the combination of circumstances by which they are surrounded.
Yesterday morning at my home, I received a deputation of officials of a trade union, who expressed deep concern to me. The factory concerned is not in my constituency, but the three officials who called to see me live in my constituency —indeed, a large number of my constituents are employed by the firm.
In addition to its shipbuilding industry, Sunderland is one of the oldest-established glass-making centres with a proud reputation. The firm in question has a very good export record and has been making glass in the area for as long as anyone can remember. Certain processes are being taken away from Sunderland and Treforest and concentrated in Stone. While the right hon. Gentleman has no immediate jurisdiction over this I would suggest that this is happening much too frequently. Stone is far from being a development area although it may have its problems. Sunderland most certainly is a development area, where more than one man in ten is without a job. I understand that more than 100 jobs are involved in this transfer.
Fears are being expressed that some of the other manufacturing processes might be transferred to Stone or elsewhere, adding further to our insurmountable problems. The Government and their supporters are always talking proudly about the enormous amount of money being poured into the economy. Yet we have the paradox of a rising rate of unemployment to which no one can see an end. We on this side are entitled to discount the optimistic expressions about the employment situation which come from the Government side, because we can see no immediate solution to the problem based on the Government's present policies.
There just cannot be the resurgence that is needed to get 1½ million people


off the unemployment register. While the money that is being poured in is welcome, it misses the point because it is not creating jobs which could be described as permanent in that they represent new industry which will generate further employment as the rundown in heavy industry continues. I say once more, as my hon. and right hon. Friends have said in the past to this Government, "For Heaven's sake get your finger out and do something to relieve this desperate problem."

6.14 p.m.

Mr. Tom Boardman: I am sure that the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin) will forgive me if I do not follow his remarks. There are two issues I want to touch upon, one major the other minor. We will want to know more from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the statement on Upper Clyde. We will want to know how firm are the assurances that it will be a viable concern. I concede that the assurances given by my right hon. Friend had a more solid ring than those given by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. We shall want to know of the effect of this upon other parts of the shipbuilding industry. My right hon. Friend referred to the payments being made to U.C.S. in a way that would not prejudice other areas. That poses the question of whether further grants will be payable to them.
I strongly believe in the philosophy supported on this side of the House that subsidy is not healthy but independence is. It is the breach of that philosophy which has led to some of our troubles—the fact that many weak plants have been propped up for so long and that the last Government failed to provide any seed-bed from which to generate growth and replace the heavy, older industries. Could this sum of money be more effectively spent in providing jobs in the newer industries, in training and retraining and in the improvement of the environment, so that people at present in the shipyards could find employment in industries with a long-term profitable future in areas where there will not be further erosion?
The minor point I seek to raise is particularly pertinent because my hon.

Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment is to reply to this debate. One way in which unemployment may be alleviated is through advancing minor road improvements and maintenance. I know that my right hon. Friends have advanced the trunk road improvement programme, carried out advance surveys and made provision for this to be done much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case, but we have not made the same progress with minor roads which are the responsibility of local authorities. They have been instructed to advance their surveys with the object of bringing plans into effect sometime in the autumn which means that people will not be on the jobs until about the spring of next year.
Many minor works schemes exist which need no survey. They are such things as taking off the corner from a road which is already pegged out. The labour resources are there, the plant is there. These are jobs which are said to be labour-intensive. My hon. Friend may not be able to reply to this tonight but I hope he will bear it in mind. Many of these schemes could be started within days of receiving authority to do so, but the local authorities must be authorised to have the grants which are necessary to do the work. Unemployment in a large section of that labour force could be quickly removed and we could have men operating throughout the spring and summer doing jobs which need to be done, such as paving work, cutting off corners and generally uplifting road standards which were allowed to decline due to economies made during the period of the last Administration. This is not a fundamental change but it is a constructive suggestion which would improve our communications system and relieve the unemployment problem.

6.18 p.m.

Mr Eric S. Heffer: I want to make one comment on the speech of the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Stokes). I have before me the Department of Employment Gazette for October, 1971, which gives more or less up-to-date figures for immigrant unemployment. I am not certain whether there has been any movement since that time. It shows that the number of coloured persons, including school-leavers, registered as unemployed in


Great Britain on 9th August, 1971, was 18,944. That is 2·3 per cent. of all wholly unemployed compared with 2·2 per cent. in May.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: The later figures for November are largely comparable.

Mr. Heffer: I am grateful. This proves that the point made by the hon. Gentleman is not accurate and that there are no more of these people, percentagewise, than any other section of the community. If we look at the total percentage of unemployed we see that there are proportionately fewer unemployed coloured workers. We ought not to have disgraceful speeches of that kind which can inflame a situation because of the serious unemployment problem.
Last Thursday the Evening Standard said that the figure of 1,600,000 unemployed was much inflated, and we accept that. Nevertheless, it argued that after the next count there would be a more realistic figure. What does that mean? Will it be 1 million or 900,000 unemployed? That is not good enough. We want to get back to the position when there is normal unemployment created by people changing jobs and nothing more. There is no so-called realistic figure that is acceptable to me or to my hon. Friends on this side of the House.
In the few moments available to me in the debate I want to talk primarily about Merseyside. Merseyside has doubled its numbers of unemployed since June, 1970. We now have on Merseyside some 54,000 workers unemployed. If we compare that situation with the situation in other development areas we see that, although it is true that we have not percentagewise reached the same level of unemployment as exists in the North-East, nevertheless Merseyside is, I think, the only development area to have doubled its numbers of unemployed since June, 1970.
I want to tell hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House that it is not only unskilled workers who are unemployed. Even within my own constituency Labour Party there are workers who have not been employed for years. They are highly skilled workers who have been out of work for months and see no prospects whatever of employment in the Merseyside area. In particular the situation is very serious among building operatives.

There is an area which is crying out for new houses and for better schools. I do do not know whether hon. Members are aware that in some areas in my constituency we still have as schools wooden buildings that were erected at the beginning of the century and which ought to be replaced but are not being replaced. Yet we have building operatives unemployed, workers who could be used for replacing those schools, who could be solving the building problem, who could be used in all sorts of construction required on Merseyside. Yet many thousands of highly skilled building operatives are unemployed in my city and area.
Then we have the problem of unemployed youth. There are young people who left school not just at Christmas, not just the Christmas before, but earlier than that, and who have never had a job. Some of them are giving up looking for work because the oportunities just do not present themselves. There is the Government's industrial training, and the development of that, but the young people are sceptical about it. They point out that some of their friends have Government training—and there is retraining —and yet when they finish at the training centres there are no jobs to go to. It is a very serious problem.
I would like to give one short quotation from the Liverpool Daily Post about a man called George Hall who is reported in that newspaper as saying:
You feel degraded because you are getting someone else's money and when I'm out, people say: 'You still out of work?'".
George Hall, who feels degraded, is but one of 54,000 workers in the Merseyside area who are also degraded and who cannot see any chance of employment.
The Prime Minister came to our city recently. We pressed him to meet the employment advisory committee of the City Council, with local employers and trade unions, and he did. They put forward a six point programme to him. I have since written to the Prime Minister asking when we shall get a reply, hoping for an early one. On the day the Prime Minister came to Liverpool the Daily Post had an editorial which put forward a policy which I endorse. This is what it said to the Prime Minister:
We know you have plans for the regions. We await them with interest. But we are


worried that from the remoteness of Whitehall it is not always possible to grasp the extent and complexity of the difficulties facing an area like Merseyside. And we would like to make these suggestions on what could be done.
If anybody on the Government side of the House thinks that the Liverpool Daily Post is a Socialist newspaper I can disabuse his mind on that. It is by no means a Socialist newspaper, but these are the suggestions which it put forward:
Restore investment grants; reprieve the regional employment premium; provide major tax incentives to attract companies into the area; apply a rigorous system of development control to limit growth in the more prosperous areas; increase the rate support grant to offset losses due to decanting of population in city redevelopment".
I am not saying I entirely endorse all those suggestions but I go along with most of them entirely.
We have in areas like Merseyside problems which require the sort of economic assistance outlined in that editorial in the Liverpool Daily Post because the Government have been totally complacent on unemployment. Unemployment has grown month by month, week by week, and yet we have not seen on the Government side any feeling of urgency, any feeling that something really important must be done to alleviate the immediate problems. Of course, right hon. and hon. Gentlemen from the Government side are now coming forward with proposals, but those proposals ought to have been carried out months ago. The assistance to U.C.S. is very valuable but it should be applied not only to U.C.S. The whole of the British shipbuilding industry requires assistance. Cammell Laird requires assistance. Every shipbuilding area requires assistance, because in our modern times one cannot compete on an international basis unless Government subsidies are given to the shipbuilding industry. Anyone who knows anything about shipbuilding knows that.
The Government must decide that they will take immediate action. They can do so in the Budget, but they should not merely wait for the Budget. They could do more and they could do it sooner. Unless the Government show very quickly that they are prepared to do something positive along the lines so often suggested from this side of the House, and, 

incidentally, many times by hon. Members on their own side of the House, too, irrespective of the Common Market or anything else they will have lost the next General Election and they will have lost it now, because the British people do not take kindly to a Government which allows more than 1 million unemployed. We have turned our backs on those days, because the British people believe in a full-employment economy.

6.30 p.m.

Mr. Norman Buchan: This debate has been characterised by the seriousness with which every hon. Member has referred to the unemployment situation.
While appreciating the valuable contributions that have been made, I wish to comment particularly on only two speeches. The first was that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones), who I believe got through to hon. Gentlemen opposite in expressing the passion which we feel on this issue. I want the Tories to appreciate the background against which we are discussing this subject. Having lived through the hungry 'twenties and Thirties, the British people are seeing those days beginning to be repeated.
The second speech on which I wish to comment was the speech made by the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Stokes), which I can only describe as squalid, mean and unworthy. For the hon. Gentleman to make such an attack on a group of people in the community when we face unemployment at its present level was unworthy of this House. As the facts can be found in a matter of minutes, and as they will no doubt be given by the Minister when he replies to the debate, it was incredible that the hon. Gentleman should make such a speculation. It cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.
We welcomed the statement of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and naturally we will not probe the matter deeply now. It would, of course, have been better had the right hon. Gentleman made a fuller statement which we could have questioned. However, we appreciate that he was anxious to make his announcement as quickly as possible and we trust that he will let us know the full position when the details are finalised.


We understand that the £35 million will be divided as to £17 million for dealing with the past situation and £18 million for the necessary working capital and investment.
I shall refrain from commenting at length on our belief that this whole problem could have been dealt with earlier if the Government had recognised what they are only now beginning to understand, and that is the fact that we cannot look at industrial problems simply from a cash point of view. We must understand from the beginning that there are human problems involved—what we are now beginning to call the social cost factor.
It has been left to the trade union movement to make the social costing in this case, and without such a costing we cannot in future allow closures and redundancies to take place. For this reason alone we are glad to see someone on the road to Damascus. We therefore welcomed the right hon. Gentleman's statement.
In similar vein, we welcomed the tribute paid by the right hon. Gentleman to Dan McGarvey. It was, however, a little ungenerous of him not also to pay tribute on behalf of this House to the people of Clydeside and Scotland and workers throughout Britain. A tribute to the men of Clydeside is due, because they stood firm and said, "We want to work and we are going to work." They above all have made possible the sort of statement which the right hon. Gentleman made. The lesson we can learn from the men of Clydeside is not only for hon. Gentlemen on the Government side to learn. My hon. Friends can learn from it too.
I say that because this debate is taking place against a new mood in Britain. It is the feeling among workers that they have a right to work. They are saying in a qualitative way, "We feel that our right to work is basic to our freedom, along with the National Health Service, education and the other social and welfare services." It will be at our peril if we do not come to terms with this new mood.

Mr. Cooper: Mr. Cooper rose—

Mr. Buchan: I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. The last point he

made was a cheap political one. I do not intend to give him the opportunity to make another.
The basic fact to recognise is that the Government's policy is in ruins. Each venture of theirs has ended in disaster. [Interruption.] If hon. Gentlemen opposite claim success for 1½ million unemployed, heaven help us when they admit failure.
The Secretary of State called in aid a passage from the Queen's Speech in which the Conservatives said that their first care would be to secure full employment. If that is their first care, heaven help us when they get to their second and third cares. They promised to reduce prices and unemployment at a stroke. In the winter we saw the complete collapse of their policy. The failure of the present Government is manifest, and nowhere was it more tragically manifest than in the Prime Minister's speech on television last night.

Dame Irene Ward: It was a jolly good speech.

Mr. Buchan: I found it sad and tragic, like the speech of a defeated man. Frequently we have seen the issue of law and order used as an excuse by hon. Gentlemen opposite for all sorts of policies by the Government. Both the Secretary of State for Employment and the Prime Minister are now trying to pull the law and order issue out of the bag as an excuse for the present state of affairs.
The Government's first claim was that they could not afford to pay the claim of the miners. Following the deliberations of the inquiry, that excuse fell flat. Now, right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have no excuse for their behaviour in this matter. Not only did the Government try to blame the miners for causing 1½ million unemployed, but in reality they precipitated the strike.
Let us look at the issue clearly, rounding off the figures to the nearest million. We have 1 million unemployed, not counting the many who were laid off because of the actions of the Government. This means that Britain is losing 250 million working days a year. That is the significance to the economy of the unemployment figures.
Let us then add 1 million people laid off as a result of the Government precipitating the miners' strike. Allowing that they were laid off for three weeks, then, for five days a week, 15 million working days have been lost, or one-and-half times the problem of strikes and disputes from the days lost point of view. And to think that we spent all last winter, six months of parliamentary time, discussing what hon. Gentlemen opposite called the need to put the country on its feet because we had lost 10 million working days! That is the situation to which the Government have brought us.
Then they blame the problem on wage inflation. That is the next excuse. They say that if only the workers would give way and cut back on their wage demands, the problems would be solved. They say also that unemployment is the result of workers pricing themselves out of jobs. That is all economic nonsense. No economist of any repute would try academically to support that. If it were not for the fact that a fight has been put up to secure higher wages—and they are not high enough yet—there would be a great deal more unemployment than we see at present. It is the fight to maintain wages against a dishonest and unadmitted incomes policy of the Government which has kept the level of unemployment even as it is. What is more, low wages are associated precisely with high unemployment. It is in the low wage areas, both industrially and geographically, that we find high levels of unemployment. The Government's argument does not wash, and it is time that they accepted responsibility instead of blaming the present situation on the workers.
Above all, we have to deal with regional policies. It is not surprising that a great deal of attention has been paid to our regional difficulties. To touch briefly on the situation in Scotland in order to get through to the nature of the problems that we are facing in the regions, paradoxically we suffer from our very success in the first Industrial Revolution. In Scotland, during the 10 years between 1957 and 1967, at enormous expense in terms of public investment, private investment, infrastructure and Government support to private investment, we built up 19,000 jobs in the motor car industry. In that same period,

in only two traditional industries—mining and shipbuilding—we lost 76,000 jobs. Traditional jobs went out in excess of new jobs coming in at the ratio of four to one.
When the present Government unscrambled their regional policies, they threw the whole situation into jeopardy. It was no use even pressing for an early decision on the Government's review of regional policies. The trouble was that they unscrambled them without any review, and we are seeing the results today. While we await the results of the review with interest, the Government must for a start restore investment grants. Only then can the regions begin to try to cushion themselves against the present situation.
In the special development areas the Government must bring in the same kind of assistance for existing industries. We shall not get new industries coming in. We must expand existing industries.
In Scotland we require at least one new major development. If it is Hunterston, so much the better. But there is a great deal of disquiet in Scotland about the Government's failure to get the right decision on Hunterston. Oil will assist, but only if a proper public appreciation is made of the opportunities lying there. It is not enough for the Secretary of State for Scotland to exhort Scottish businessmen to take advantage of them. The responsibility is the Government's.
I welcome the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Robert Hughes) that we should see oil as a new unexpected windfall for the the nation. The results of oil exploration should be used to restore the regions, by which I mean not only Scotland, but the North-East, the North, South Wales and the South-West. I welcome the courage of the Secretary of State in saying what he did last week. I know the views on oil in Scotland at the present time.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment is to wind up the debate. I have no doubt that he will tell us about road development and new policies towards building. I hope to hear about a new policy towards housing. When right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite talk about inflation, they appear to forget that


they are introducing the biggest inflationary policy ever with their Housing Finance Bill.
One of the most cost-productive activities indulged in in Britain at the present time is to be seen when this House debates unemployment. Every time we do so, we get fresh announcements about public expenditure. I wish that we had debates on unemployment more often.

6.45 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine): Having spent the first four years of my time in the House listening to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite justifying from this Dispatch Box the need for some form of statutory incomes policy, I was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan) describe as economic nonsense the Government's attempt to control wage increases. I thought that all past Governments had agreed that this was very important in the general management of the economy.
This has been a very interesting debate. I have no doubt that anyone who set out to define the position in terms of our political purpose would see the opportunity for people to earn their livelihoods and pursue their careers in decent conditions of employment as a central theme.
The fact is that, from the middle of 1966, the unemployment figures have climbed remorselessly from about 250,000 to more than 500,000 in 1968–69 and to more than 600,000 by mid-1970, until today they are past the million mark. As the emergence of what is a new post-war phenomenon has taken hold, so hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed increasing anxiety. Today has been no exception. The present Government feel, as I believe the last Government felt, that this is a matter in which we are all deeply aware of the human tragedy that these mounting statistics provide. The recurrence of this problem over the last five years is a tragic waste of national resources. Above all, however, it is a human problem involving despair, frustration, and hardship which it must be the preoccupation of us all to solve. There is no difference between the two sides of the House on this matter. The area of distinction and difference and the area upon which we may divide at

the end of this debate concerns how we should move politically rather than whether we should.
The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) spoke about the need for special development area status being granted to Dundee. It is a development area at the moment, of course, and, although the hon. Gentleman quoted figures reflecting the current situation as a result of the miners' strike, even his lower figure of 8,000 does not take account of the fact that part of it is a reflection of the India-Pakistan dispute which has affected the jute industry.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Mr. Roger White) raised the question of C.E.G.B. construction and the terms on which the board was expected to employ local labour. It is the Government's view that management should be free to decide where to recruit labour, bearing in mind that there are arguments for the maintenance of specialist teams of people to move round and do the necessary work.
The hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown) asked whether Swan Hunter would get help if it ran into trouble during the next year or so. If the hon. Gentleman had listened more carefully to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, he would have known that my right hon. Friend is looking carefully at the problems of the shipbuilding industry in the light of the announcement that he has made today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Redmond) spoke about the imminence of the Government's regional review. This matter was also raised by a number of hon. Members. The fact is that all Governments, faced with a problem of the complexity and ongoing nature of this one, try to make sure that their conclusions are right. My right hon. Friend has made it clear that he is determined that the very detailed analysis that he is carrying out should be thorough so that when, eventually, we come forward with proposals they will be right and will allow us to move to the solutions that we all want.
What my right hon. Friend is not prepared to do, however, is to get involved in a set of expedients which would have a profound long-term effect on regional


policies. There is much argument—and the Government have indulged in it—in favour of bringing forward short-term expenditure proposals over the next two financial years. But we are determined to deal thoroughly, with a question of the long-term and on-going economic strategy of the Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West asked me to explain the discrepancy between high unemployment and newspapers full of advertisements. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) referred to what appeared to be a strange contradiction. There is an apparent contradiction in the building and construction industry in which there appears to be a shortage of skilled and unskilled people. Discussions are taking place between the Department of Employment and the Department of the Environment to discover where shortages exist and to see what can be done through the massive training schemes which the Government have announced to overcome those shortages.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor) raised a number of detailed questions relating to my right hon. Friend's statement today. The first dealt with the question of the Upper Clyde order book. It is the Government's view that the management is responsible for the seeking of new orders and for some time past it has been in consultation with ship owners on this score. My hon. Friend asked about the question of agreements with the unions. The Government's view is that Govan Shipbuilders can succeed only if it has the full co-operation of the work force. Therefore, before the Government provide funds they will wish to be satisfied that this co-operation is forthcoming. Negotiations between the unions and the company are proceeding, and it is understood that considerable progress has been made. I hope that my hon. Friend finds that answer helpful.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) asked about the possibility of moving forward with the improvement and maintenance of principal roads. He is right in saying that the Government have made substantial proposals involving the expenditure of £40 million for

accelerating the improvement of maintenance standards of trunk roads. But the question of the principal roads is for the local authorities. They are responsible for the maintenance of those roads and it is right for the Government, having committed £40 million to trunk road maintenance following publication of the Marshall Report, to say to local authorities, "We have shown the way and it is not unreasonable for us to expect you to follow our example".
The debate has covered an immensely wide range of subjects. Many of the unemployed problems have centred on the regions. I wish to say a few words about what will, in the long term, be seen to be one of the most significant contributions in this respect. Without doubt the outlying regions suffer from two particular problems. The first concerns a communications situation which is far from satisfactory, and the second is that many of the regions bear the scars of an earlier age which make industrialists adopt an unsympathetic attitude when considering whether they should move ther industries to them. Therefore, the Department is greatly concerned to push forward schemes—and there are many of them—to raise the general standard of amenity in those areas.
I should like to refer to five programmes in particular. First, announcements have been made about the special infrastructure works programme. It was originally intended to spend about £100 million, spread over the next two or three years, on this programme but such was the response of local authorities to the scheme that on 26th October, 1971, the figure was raised to £162 million. We have made it clear that if local authorities submitted proposals for further schemes which satisfied the conditions we had laid down, we would be prepared to consider them. The advantage of programmes of this sort is that they enable local authorities to consider desirable local schemes over a longer period than has been possible hitherto under the winter works programmes which have been introduced by Governments very much as a last minute resort.
Secondly, the Housing Act, 1971, provides for an increase in the level of grant payable by local authorities to private house owners in the development and intermediate areas. This increase is from


50 to 75 per cent. of the approved cost subject to a ceiling of £1,500 in each case. It is laid down that the expenditure must be incurred before 23rd June, 1973, so that it does not disrupt the Government's long-term plan for reflating the economy. There has been a very substantial increase in the amount of help given to local authorities wishing to improve council houses under a similar scheme. Under the Act, 100,000 council houses in England and Wales will be improved, over half of them in the Northern Region.
The third matter concerns slum clearance schemes. In the Housing Finance Bill which is now in Committee the Government propose a 75 per cent. grant in respect of any loss which local authorities may incur on their slum clearance operations. I have no doubt that the whole House will welcome the statement made by Ministers that it is foreseen that within a decade all the slums in this country will be eliminated with the help of the efforts now being put behind the campaign.
Fourthly, the problems of the areas where we can see the industrial scars to which I have referred, are best identified by considering the question of derelict land, which is only too evident in many of the areas we are discussing. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has encouraged local authorities to press ahead in dealing with this matter as fast as possible. The response from local authorities has been extremely encouraging. We give grants of 85 per cent. in development areas and of 75 per cent. in intermediate areas for derelict land clearance schemes. This work has been included in the key sector, so there will be no difficulty in processing the work. Over

the country as a whole, 187 schemes were approved in 1970–71 covering 2,830 acres at a cost of £4¾ million. This shows an improvement on the situation in 1969 when 101 schemes were approved. A great deal of this work is being carried out in the development areas.

The fifth scheme is the Special Operation Eyesore announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State when he wrote to all local authorities on 7th February asking them to put forward proposals for the general improvement of small items which could be held to be blemishes on the local environment. This scheme, limited to 30th June, 1973, has produced a most remarkable response from local authorities and we are processing their applications as fast as possible.

There are immense programmes of improvement in the areas which we have been debating. For instance the expenditure of £500 million over the last five years on general sewerage and water programmes is matched by an expenditure of £820 million over the next five years. There are major schemes in the Northern Region amounting to £45 million on Tyneside and £18 million on Teesside.

An immense amount of hard work is being done in connection with the crucial long-term recovery of the regions—

Mr. Walter Harrison: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 311, Noes 277.

Division No. 66.]
AYES
[7.0 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Biggs-Davison, John
Bullus, Sir Eric


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Blaker, Peter
Burden, F. A.


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Butler, Adam (Bosworth)


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Body, Richard
Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Boscawen, Robert
Carlisle, Mark


Astor, John
Bossom, Sir Clive
Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert


Atkins, Humphrey
Bowden, Andrew
Cary, Sir Robert


Awdry, Daniel
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Channon, Paul


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Braine, Sir Bernard
Chapman, Sydney


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Bray, Ronald
Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher


Batsford, Brian
Brewis, John
Chichester-Clark, R


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Brinton, Sir Tatton
Churchill, W. S.


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Clark, William (Surrey, E.)


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)


Benyon, W.
Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Clegg, Walter


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Bryan, Paul
Cockeram, Eric


Biffen, John
Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N &amp; M)
Cooke, Robert




Coombs, Derek
Iremonger, T. L.
Peel, John


Cooper, A. E.
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Percival, Ian


Cordle, John
James, David
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Pike, Miss Mervyn


Cormack, Patrick
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Pink, R. Bonner


Costain, A. P.
Jessel, Toby
Pounder, Rafton


Critchley, Julian
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Crouch, David
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Crowder, F. P.
Jopling, Michael
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Dalkeith, Earl of
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Quennell, Miss J. M.


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Kershaw, Anthony
Raison, Timothy


Dean, Paul
Kilfedder, James
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Kimball, Marcus
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter


Digby, Simon Wingfield
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Redmond, Robert


Dixon, Piers
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Dodds-Parker. Douglas
Kinsey, J. R.
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Drayson, G. B.
Kirk, Peter
Rees-Davies, W. R.


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Kitson, Timothy
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Dykes, Hugh
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Eden, Sir John
Knox, David
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Lambton, Lord
Ridsdale, Julian


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Lane, David
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Elliott, R. W. (Nc'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Farr, John
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Fell, Anthony
Le Marchant, Spencer
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Rost, Peter


Fidler, Michael
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Royle, Anthony


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Russell, Sir Ronald


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Longden, Sir Gilbert
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Loveridge, John
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.


Fookes, Miss Janet
Luce, R. N.
Scott, Nicholas


Fortescue, Tim
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Scott-Hopkins, James


Foster, Sir John
MacArthur, Ian
Sharples, Richard


Fowler, Norman
McCrindle, R. A.
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Fox, Marcus
McLaren, Martin
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Simeons, Charles


Fry, Peter
McMaster, Stanley
Sinclair, Sir George


Galbraith, Hn. T. G.
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Gardner, Edward
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)


Gibson-Watt, David
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)
Soref, Harold


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Maddan, Martin
Speed, Keith


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Maginnis, John E.
Spence, John


Glyn, Dr. Alan
Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest
Sproat, Iain


Goodhart, Philip
Marten, Neil
Stainton, Keith


Goodhew, Victor
Mather, Carol
Stanbrook, Ivor


Gorst, John
Maude, Angus
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Gower, Raymond
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Mawby, Ray
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Gray, Hamish
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Stokes, John


Green, Alan
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom


Grieve, Percy
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Sutcliffe, John


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Tapsell, Peter


Grylls, Michael
Miscampbell, Norman
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Gummer, J. Selwyn
Mitchell, Lt.-Col.C. (Aberdeenshire, W)
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)


Gurden, Harold
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Moate, Roger
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Molyneaux, James
Tebbit, Norman


Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Money, Ernle
Temple, John M.


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Hannam, John (Exeter)
Monro, Hector
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Montgomery, Fergus
Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)


Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
More, Jasper
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Haselhurst, Alan
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Tilney, John


Hastings, Stephen
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Havers, Michael
Morrison, Charles
Trew, Peter


Hawkins, Paul
Mudd, David
Tugendhat, Christopher


Hay, John
Murton, Oscar
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Hayhoe, Barney
Nabarro, Sir Gerald
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
Neave, Airey
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Heseltine, Michael
Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Vickers, Dame Joan


Hicks, Robert
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Waddington, David


Higgins, Terence L.
Normanton, Tom
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Nott, John
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)


Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Onslow, Cranley
Walker-Smith. Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Holland, Philip
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Walters, Dennis


Holt, Miss Mary
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Ward, Dame Irene


Hordern, Peter
Osborn, John
Warren, Kenneth


Hornby, Richard
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Hornsby-Smiih, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Page, Graham (Crosby)
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Whitelaw, Rt. Kn. William


Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Paisley, Rev. Ian
Wiggin, Jerry


Hunt, John
Parkinson, Cecil
Wilkinson, John


Hutchison, Michael Clark

Winterton, Nicholas







Wolrige Gordon, Patrick
Woodnutt, Mark
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard
Worsley, Marcus
Mr. Reginald Eyre and Mr. Bernard Weatherill.


Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.





NOES


Abse, Leo
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)


Albu, Auston
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
McBride, Neil


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
McCann, John


Allen, Scholefield
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McCartney, Hugh


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Foley, Maurice
McElhone, Frank


Ashley, Jack
Foot, Michael
McGuire, Michael


Ashton, Joe
Ford, Ben
Mackenzie, Gregor


Atkinson, Norman
Forrester, John
Mackie, John


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Mackintosh, John p.


Barnes, Michael
Freeson, Reginald
Maclennan, Robert


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Galpern, Sir Myer
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Garrett, W. E.
McNamara, J. Kevin


Baxter, William
Gilbert, Dr. John
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield E.)


Benn, Rt. Kn. Anthony Wedgwood
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Marks, Kenneth


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Golding, John
Marquand, David


Bidwell, Sydney
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Marsden, F.


Bishop, E. S.
Gourlay, Harry
Marshall, Dr. Edmund


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Grant, George (Morpeth)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Mayhew, Christopher


Booth, Albert
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Meacher, Michael


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Mendelson, John


Bradley, Tom
Hamling, William
Mikardo, Ian


Broughton, Sir Alfred
Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
Millan, Bruce


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Hardy, Peter
Milne, Edward


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Harper, Joseph
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)>


Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Molloy, William


Buchan, Norman
Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Hattersley, Roy
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)


Cant, R. B.
Heffer, Eric S.
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)


Carmichael, Neil
Hilton, W. S.
Moyle, Roland


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Hooson, Emlyn
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Horam, John
Murray, Ronald King


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Oakes, Gordon


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Ogden, Eric


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Huckfield, Leslie
O'Halloran, Michael


Cohen, Stanley
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
O'Malley, Brian


Coleman, Donald
Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Oram, Bert


Concannon, J. D.
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Orbach, Maurice


Conlan, Bernard
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Orme, Stanley


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Hunter, Adam
Oswald, Thomas


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)


Crawshaw, Richard
Janner, Greville
Padley, Walter


Cronin, John
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Paget, R. T.


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Palmer, Arthur


Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)
Jenkin, Hugh (Putney)
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Pardoe, John


Dalyell, Tam
John, Brynmor
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Davidson, Arthur
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Pavitt, Laurie


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Pendry, Tom


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Pentland, Norman


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Perry, Ernest G.


Deakins, Eric
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Prescott, John


Delargy, H. J.
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Judd, Frank
Price, William (Rugby)


Doig, Peter
Kaufman, Gerald
Probert, Arthur


Dormand, J. D.
Kelley, Richard
Rankin, John


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Kerr, Russell
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Lambie, David
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)


Driberg. Tom
Lamond, James
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Duffy, A. E. P.
Latham, Arthur
Richard, Ivor


Dunn, James A.
Lawson, George
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Dunnett, Jack
Leadbitter, Ted
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Eadie, Alex
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Edelman, Maurice
Leonard, Dick
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lestor, Miss Joan
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Roper, John


Ellis, Tom
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Rose, Paul B.


English, Michael
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Ross. Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Evans, Fred
Lipton, Marcus
Sandelson, Neville


Ewing, Henry
Lomas, Kenneth
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Faulds, Andrew
Loughlin, Charles
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)




Silkin, Rt. Kn. John (Deptford)







Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Taverne, Dick
Wellbeloved, James


Sillars, James
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Silverman, Julius
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee E.)
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Skinner, Dennis
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy
Whitehead, Phillip


Small, William
Tinn, James
Whitlock, William


Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)
Tomney, Frank
Willey. Rt. Hn. Frederick


Spearing, Nigel
Torney, Tom
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Spriggs, Leslie
Tuck, Raphael
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Stallard, A. W.
Urwin, T. W.
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Steel, David
Varley, Eric G.
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)
Wainwright, Edwin
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)
Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)
Woof, Robert


Stoddart, David (Swindon)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)



Strang, Gavin
Wallace, George
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.
Watkins, David
Mr. Ernest Armstrong and Mr. James Hamilton.


Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley
Weitzman, David



Swain, Thomas

Amendment accordingly agreed to.

Main Question, as amended, put:

The House divided: Ayes 311 Noes 277.

Division No. 67.]
AYES
[7.13 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Costain, A. P.
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Critchley, Julian
Haselhurst, Alan


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Crouch, David
Hastings, Stephen


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Crowder, F. P.
Havers, Michael


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Dalkeith, Earl of
Hawkins, Paul


Astor, John
Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Hay, John


Atkins, Humphrey
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hayhoe, Barney


Awdry, Daniel
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Heath, Rt. Hn Edward


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Dean, Paul
Heseltine, Michael


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Hicks, Robert


Batsford, Brian
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Higgins, Terence L.


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Dixon, Piers
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Drayson, G. B.
Holland, Philip


Benyon, W.
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Holt, Miss Mary


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Dykes, Hugh
Hordern, Peter


Biffen, John
Eden, Sir John
Hornby, Richard


Biggs-Davison, John
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia


Blaker, Peter
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)


Body, Richard
Farr, John
Hunt, John


Boscawen, Robert
Fell, Anthony
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Bossom, Sir Clive
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Iremonger, T. L.


Bowden, Andrew
Fidler, Michael
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
James, David


Braine, Bernard
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)


Bray, Ronald
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)


Brewis, John
Fookes, Miss Janet
Jessel, Toby


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Fortescue, Tim
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Foster, Sir John
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Fowler, Norman
Jopling, Michael


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Fox, Marcus
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith


Bryan, Paul
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N&amp;M)
Fry, Peter
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine


Bullus, Sir Eric
Galbraith, Hn. T. G.
Kershaw, Anthony


Burden, F. A.
Gardner, Edward
Kilfedder, James


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Gibson-Watt, David
Kimball, Marcus


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)


Carlisle, Mark
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
King, Tom (Bridgwater)


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Glyn, Dr. Alan
Kinsey, J. R.


Cary, Sir Robert
Goodhart, Philip
Kirk, Peter


Channon, Paul
Goodhew, Victor
Kitson, Timothy


Chapman, Sydney
Gorst, John
Knight, Mrs. Jill


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Gower, Raymond
Knox, David


Chichester-Clark, R.
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Lambton, Lord


Churchill, W. S.
Gray, Hamish
Lane, David


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Green, Alan
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Grieve, Percy
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Clegg, Walter
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Le Marchant, Spencer


Cockeram, Eric
Grylls, Michael
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Cooke, Robert
Gummer, Selwyn
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)


Coombs, Derek
Gurden, Harod
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)


Cooper, A. E.
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Longden, Gilbert


Cordle, John
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Loveridge, John


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Luce, R. N.


Cormack, Patrick
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
McAdden, Sir Stephen



Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
MacArthur, Ian







McCrindle, R. A.
Parkinson, Cecil
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


McLaren, Martin
Peel, John
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Percival, Ian
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


McMaster, Stanley
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John
Stokes, John


Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Pike, Miss Mervyn
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom


McNair-Wilson, Michael
Pink, R. Bonner
Sutcliffe, John


McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Pounder, Rafton
Tapsell, Peter


Maddan, Martin
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Maginnis, John E.
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)


Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Marten, Neil
Proudfoot, Wilfred
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)


Mather, Carol
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Tebbit, Norman


Maude, Angus
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Temple, John M.


Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Raison, Timothy
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs Margaret


Mawby, Ray
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter
Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Redmond. Robert
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)
Tilney, John


Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Rees, Peter (Dover)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Miscampbell, Norman
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Trew, Peter


Mitchell, Lt.-Col.C. (Aberdeenshire, W)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Tugendhat, Christopher


Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Moate, Roger
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Molyneaux, James
Ridsdale, Julian
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard




Vickers, Dame Joan


Money, Ernie
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Waddington, David


Monks, Mrs. Connie
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Monro, Hector
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)


Montgomery, Fergus
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


More, Jasper
Rost, Peter
Walters, Dennis


Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Royle, Anthony
Ward, Dame Irene


Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Russell, Sir Ronald
Warren, Kenneth


Morrison, Charles
St. John-Stevas, Norman
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Mudd, David
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Murton, Oscar
Scott, Nicholas
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Scott-Hopkins, James
Wiggin, Jerry


Neave, Airey
Sharples, Richard
Wilkinson, John


Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)
Winterton, Nicholas


Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Shelton, William (Clapham)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Normanton, Tom
Simeons, Charles
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Nott, John
Sinclair, Sir George
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Onslow, Cranley
Skeet, T. H. H.
Woodnutt, Mark


Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)
Worsley, Marcus


Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Soref, Harold
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Osborn, John
Speed, Keith



Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Spence, John
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Page, Graham (Crosby)
Sproat, Iain
Mr. Reginald Eyre and Mr. Bernard Weatherill.


Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Stainton, Keith



Paisley, Rev. Ian
Stanbrook, Ivor





NOES


Abse, Leo
Carter, Ray (Birming'm, Northfield)
Dunn, James A.


Albu, Austen
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Dunnett, Jack


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Eadle, Alex


Allen, Scholefield
Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Edelman, Maurice


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)


Armstrong, Ernest
Cohen, Stanley
Edwards, William (Merioneth)


Ashley, Jack
Coleman, Donald
Ellis, Tom


Ashton, Joe
Concannon, J. D.
English, Michael


Atkinson, Norman
Conlan, Bernard
Evans, Fred


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Ewing, Henry


Barnes, Michael
Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Faulds, Andrew


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Crawshaw, Richard
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Cronin, John
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)


Baxter, William
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Bidwell, Sydney
Dalyell, Tam
Foley, Maurice


Bishop, E. S.
Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Foot, Michael


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Davidson, Arthur
Ford, Ben


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Forrester, John


Booth, Albert
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Fraser, John (Norwood)


Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Freeson, Reginald


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Galpern, Sir Myer


Bradley, Tom
Deakins, Eric
Garrett, W. E.


Broughton, Sir Alfred
de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Gilbert, Dr. John


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Delargy, H. J.
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.


Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Doig, Peter
Gourlay, Harry


Buchan, Norman
Dormand, J. D.
Grant, George (Morpeth)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)


Cant, R. B.
Driberg, Tom
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)


Carmichael, Neil
Duffy, A. E. P.
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)







Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Mackenzie, Gregot
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Hamling, William
Mackie, John
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Hannan, William (G'gow. Maryhill)
Mackintosh, John P.
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)


Hardy, Peter
Maclennan, Robert
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Roper, John


Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
McNamara, J. Kevin
Rose, Paul B.


Hattersley, Roy
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Marks, Kenneth
Sandelson, Neville


Heffer, Eric S.
Marquand, David
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Hilton, W. S.
Marsden, F.
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Hooson, Emlyn
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)


Horam, John
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Mayhew, Christopher
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Meacher, Michael
Sillars, James


Huckfield, Leslie
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Silverman, Julius


Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Mendelson, John
Skinner, Dennis


Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Mikardo, Ian
Small, William


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Millan, Bruce
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Hughes Roy (Newport)
Milne, Edward
Spearing, Nigel


Hunter, Adam
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)
Spriggs, Leslie


Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)
Molloy, William
Stallard, A. W.


Janner, Greville
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Steel, David


Jav, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)


Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)


Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Moyle, Roland
Strang, Gavin


John, Brynmor
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Murray, Ronald King
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Oakes, Gordon
Swain, Thomas


Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Ogden, Eric
Taverne, Dick


Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
O'Halloran, Michael
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)


Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
O'Malley, Brian
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Oram, Bert
Thorpe. Rt. Hn. Jeremy


Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Orbach, Maurice
Tinn, James


Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Orme, Stanley
Tomney, Frank


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Oswald, Thomas
Torney, Tom


Judd, Frank
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)
Tuck, Raphael


Kaufman, Gerald
Padley, Walter
Urwin, T. W.


Kelley, Richard
Paget, R. T.
Varley, Eric G.


Kerr, Russell
Palmer, Arthur
Wainwright, Edwin


Lambie, David
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)


Lamond, James
Pardoe, John
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Latham, Arthur
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Wallace, George


Lawson, George
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Watkins, David


Leadbitter, Ted
Pavitt, Laurie
Weitzman, David


Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Wellbeloved, James


Leonard, Dick
Pendry, Tom
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Lestor, Miss Joan
Pentland, Norman
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Perry, Ernest G.
Whitehead, Phillip


Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.
Whitlock, William


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Prescott, John
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Lipton, Marcus
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Lomas, Kenneth
Price, William (Rugby)
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Loughlin, Charles
Probert, Arthur
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Rankin, John
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


McBride, Neil
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)
Woof, Robert


McCann, John
Rhodes, Geoffrey
TELLERS FOR THE NOES


McCartney, Hugh
Richard, Ivor
Mr. John Golding and Mr. Joseph Harper.


McElhone, Frank
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)



McGuire, Michael

Main Question, as amended, agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House, deeply concerned at the continuing high level of unemployment which imposes wholly unacceptable burdens upon large numbers of people in the community,

commends Her Majesty's Government for their resolute efforts to secure a reduction in unemployment by massive economic measures, including the containment of inflation, with full employment as the objective.

Orders of the Day — ANGLESEY MARINE TERMINAL BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

7.24 p.m.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: The Bill provides for the vesting in the Anglesey County Council of the harbour undertakings of the Almwch Urban District Council, authorises the county council and Shell U.K. Ltd. to construct works and acquire land, and empowers the county council to make certain charges and exercise certain related powers. It comes to this House as amended in another place, where it has already been the subject of exhaustive and detailed scrutiny. Not even the most obdurate critic could say that the Bill is being rushed through Parliament. None the less, I am glad that we are having this further opportunity for a debate. For that reason and because of the interest which the Bill has aroused, I hope that hon. Members will bear with me if I go in some detail into its background before dealing with the main Clauses.
May I deal first with its national aspect. In present circumstances, it is hardly necessary for me to remind hon. Members of the important rôle played by energy in our national life. The demand for energy is increasing at a daunting rate, and estimates put the United Kingdom demand for energy in 1980 at the equivalent of about 440 million tons of coal, again a present level of about 380 million tons, an increase of 60 million tons during the next eight years. More than half of this is at present supplied by oil, and the percentage is unlikely to diminish during the next 10 or 20 years, notwithstanding the expansion, of natural gas and nuclear energy.
If the United Kingdom oil industry is to be prepared to meet this demand, it follows that plans for refinery expansion have to be put in hand now. Equally, if we are to compete in world/European markets, and also protect our balance of payments, it is essential that these refineries should be located as close to the customer as possible and should take full advantage of economies of scale

supplying the oil, especially by the use of the new large tankers—usually called V.L.C.C.s.
It is against that background that Shell U.K., which is associated with Anglesey County Council in the Bill, obtained permission in 1970 for the expansion of the refinery at Stanlow, from 10 million to 18 million tons per annum, a level which it hopes to attain by the end of 1973. I understand that requirements by the end of this decade could be as high as 30 million tons per annum.
I was interested to discover in my studies into the background of the Bill how big an area Stanlow serves, and how many constituencies are affected. It is an area covering Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales. It extends into Yorkshire as far as Leeds and Sheffield, south to Birmingham, and north to the Scottish border. These are important considerations for hon. Members representing constituencies throughout this large part of our country.
Stanlow is at present supplied through a terminal at Tranmere on the Mersey, and the current practice, regarded as acceptable by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, is to carry much of the oil from the Middle East in large tankers which, owing to the draught limitations of the Mersey, have to be lightened in Liverpool Bay so that the large tankers and the lightening ship can both enter the Mersey. As I said, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board regards the present level as acceptable, but it was evident to both Shell and the board that in the long term alternative ways of supplying Stanlow and the north of England would have to be sought.
Of course, we in Wales are deeply interested in and concerned about Milford Haven. It is the only port at present capable of taking tankers of 200,000 tons. But Milford Haven was very carefully considered and was ruled out, first, for the obvious geographical reason that it is very far from the Mersey and, secondly, because it is unlikely to be able to take the very large tankers of 300,000 tons.
Eventually, it was agreed between the board and Shell that the solution was a single-buoy mooring. After a very thorough survey of suitably sheltered anchorages with deep water—a minimum of 120 ft. is required—within reasonable distance of Merseyside, it was found that


Amlwch in my constituency was the only suitable site. Anglesey has a very important natural resource, because the 20-fathom line goes within two miles of its coast.
Accordingly, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board submitted a Private Bill earlier last year similar in principle to this one. However, as it involved extending the limits of the Port of Liverpool to Anglesey, this idea was not acceptable to the Anglesey County Council or to the people of Anglesey, who felt that they could set up and run a port authority and gain any benefits flowing from it. The board recognised this willingly and co-operated by withdrawing that Bill.
However, there remained considerable interest in Anglesey in the project, which it is believed would be of possible benefit to the island, as well as in the national interest. The Anglesey County Council therefore embarked on a close and detailed examination of the project, from an economic, technical and environmental standpoint. The proposal to submit a new Bill on behalf of the county council was endorsed by the county council on 18th March, 1971, by 45 votes to 11. There was therefore clearly a substantial majority in favour.
The Bill received a Second Reading in another place on 9th June, 1971. It was examined by a Select Committee for six days from 29th June. Subsequently, new evidence which came to light was volunteered by Shell and reported to the Select Committee. Following Committee proceedings in another place, on 21st October, the Committee sat again for two days on 7th and 8th December and reported further on the 8th. The Bill received its Third Reading on 1st February and was passed with a majority in another place. That is the exhaustive examination which has taken place.
Before I outline the salient points of the Bill, it might help if I gave a brief account of how single-buoy mooring operates. I was personally interested, not being a technical person, to study the work of this interesting operation.
In appearance, a single buoy mooring is a biggish buoy 50 feet in diameter protruding 12 feet above the surface of the sea. It is securely anchored to the

sea bed and is to be connected to shore installation by a submarine pipeline. At Amlwch there would be two buoys about two miles from the shore. They would be just visible to the naked eye on a fine day. The tanker is moored at the bows and is free to swing around to wind and tide.
At a discharge terminal, as this will be, the oil is pumped from a submarine pipeline by the ship's pumps, through the shore installations, to a tank farm. It is proposed that this farm should be located at Rhosgoch about three miles inland. The landward work has been the subject of a public inquiry, because it comes under the Town and Country Planning Acts and does not require a Private Bill.
I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to tell the House that the Secretary of State's verdict will be made known before long, certainly before the Bill goes to the Select Committee in due course. I understand that the Select Committee will be held early in June. While this is an unusually long time, nevertheless, out of respect for the objectors, it is necessary because it gives hon. Members and others who genuinely object to the Bill ample opportunity to study further what points arise from the Secretary of State's final decision on the public inquiry.
The Preamble to the Bill sets out more formally what I have said about the need for the terminal and for the vesting of its control in the major local authority for Anglesey. This is being done with the agreement of the Amlwch Urban District Council which will receive compensation for the transfer of the old harbour. This provision is set out in detail in Part II.
Part III empowers the terminal authority to maintain and improve the harbour and its associated buildings and to dispose of obstructions and dangers to navigation. It also gives the terminal authority the power to regulate the use of the terminal and, most important, sets up the A.M.T. Committee to exercise the county council's authority.
The House will be interested in the composition of the committee. It will consist of nine members appointed by the county council, three nominated by the company, three nominated by the Amlwch Urban District Council, and I understand that an undertaking has been


given that the Liverpool Pilotage Authority will also have one member.
Therefore, the local authorities will have a substantial majority on this committee. In other words, Anglesey will be in charge of the operation. It will be a democratic process and the people of Anglesey are as capable of this as they are of running other things. The council has been one of the most pioneering county councils in the United Kingdom. This committee would employ those operating the terminal.
Part IV empowers the terminal authority to make certain charges. Part V empowers the company to acquire and use certain designated land. The plan is deposited with the Bill. Part VI empowers the company to construct and install the two buoys and associated works, including breakwaters, to make the harbour navigable at all stages of the tide—a very important innovation.
Part VII gives the terminal authority borrowing powers and provides for the handling of income and expenditure. Finally, Part VIII deals with a number of miscellaneous points falling within the responsibility of the Secretary of State—Trinity House, the Public Health Acts and the Town and Country Planning Acts.
I said that the Anglesey County Council decided to sponsor the Bill only after long and careful scrutiny. This scrutiny enabled the members to be certain that the project would be for the benefit of the people of Anglesey. Representatives of the council therefore visited Milford Haven, Bantry Bay and the Humber, where a single-buoy mooring has been operating for over a year.
After the most careful study of all the implications, I myself concluded that the council is right. It is not easy or indeed right to come to a quick and facile conclusion on a major development of this kind. The elected representatives of local authorities in Anglesey and I as the Member of Parliament did not lightly conclude that the balance of argument rested with the Bill and the county council.
I believe that the construction of the mooring and its ancillary installations will not pose a threat to our coast. The little harbour of Amlwch, which has regrettably fallen into decay, will receive

a new lease of life as a result of the improvements, which will make it navigable for 24 hours of the day. In particular, the modest shore installation will be a marked improvement on the offensive rubbish tip which at present occupies the site.
As a native and resident of Anglesey, I have from the start fully appreciated the concern of those engaged in the tourist industry and those who are concerned to preserve our amenities. They were concerned that this scheme would increase the danger of sea pollution—and oil on beaches is one of the most unpleasant manifestations of progress in our time.
But it is slightly presumptuous to assume that we, the natives, are less concerned about our heritage than others. We are very deeply concerned. The threat from oil pollution to the North Wales beaches has been with us for a long time. This is due to the intensive traffic in Liverpool Bay. But the evidence is strong that this threat would be greatly reduced by the diversion of tankers from the approaches to the Mersey. Unless the single-buoy moorings are built, increasingly intensive traffic will increase the risk of pollution.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: Is the right hon. Gentleman happy that it is possible, while the Bill is in the Select Committee, to have strong undertakings given by Shell that will be oil-tight regarding pollution? I am sure that he has considered that aspect.

Mr. Hughes: The hon. and learned Member will have read the proceedings of the Select Committee and the proceedings of the public inquiry which was held at Amlwch over three weeks and which is deposited in the Library for his scrutiny. He will see that the witnesses called on behalf of the county council and on behalf of Shell gave their views and gave strong assurances. Their opinion, clearly held, was that the risks of pollution over the next decade will be substantially lessened if single buoy moorings are there. It will give far greater control over the tankers than increasingly intensive traffic along the lanes of the Mersey. No doubt the hon. and learned Gentleman will wish to look into this matter before the Select Committee sits in June.
Thirdly—and relevant to the perfectly proper and reasonable question asked by the hon. and learned Gentleman—should a spillage occur anywhere in Liverpool Bay, and not necessarily from a tanker, the presence of two powerful and specially equipped launches would be a most welcome addition in bridging the gap between Holyhead and Liverpool, the nearest points from which help is available at present. I give an example. Spillages of a substantial character come from collisions, as the House knows only too well from bitter experience. Should there be a collision resulting in the escape of fuel oil from any ship which threatened Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Rhyl or Prestatyn, these launches would then be available to help to deal with it. That is a safeguard which we do not enjoy at present.
It is interesting to note that the pollution officer for Anglesey has expressed the view in evidence that a single buoy mooring at Amlwch would be a positive step towards reducing the rate of pollution. The harbour authorities in Liverpool have confirmed that there would be no extra hazard to shipping lanes. Liverpool pilots have expressed their satisfaction. They would be responsible for handling tankers to and from S.B.M.s. The constructive advice and participation of the Liverpool pilots who, after all, are experts on shipping and navigation in this area, is greatly valued. The conclusion is that the operation is not a hazard and, therefore, it is of considerable significance when we consider all the implications of what is proposed.
A further question is whether the tank farm at Rhosgoch, excluded from the Bill but perhaps present in the minds of some hon. Members, would detract from the amenity value of the district. Here I do not want to stray too far outside the Bill, because this again was the subject of the planning inquiry's remit. But it is important to remember that the selection of the site at Rhosgoch and the design of the layout was the work of Mr. Gordon Graham, the distinguished landscape architect. Furthermore, the North Wales branch of the Royal Institute of British Architects has expressed general approval of the scheme. I cannot accept that there will be a loss of tourist attraction for Anglesey. Indeed, to the extent

that the harbour will be greatly improved after years of neglect, it could prove an important new amenity for yachtsmen and small boat sailors. The county council has consulted carefully with the local yachting club, and the Amlwch Yacht Club is pleased with the improvements which will flow from the scheme.
On the economic side there are some advantages. Hon. Members on all sides of the House are concerned at present, rightly, with employment. We have just had a debate on that subject. In Anglesey, the unemployment figure for January, 1972, was 1,885, or 11 per cent. overall, and principally male. In the Amlwch area there are 384 men out of work—in that small town. The construction of the terminal would provide work for 200, and once it it is operating there will be direct permanent jobs for 60 and, indirectly, jobs for a further 40. Because Amlwch will also be used for crew changing and provisioning, there will be further direct benefits. The county council, through the terminal authority, will receive an income rising to £200,000 per annum net. The tank farm and other installations will increase the rateable value, even after the rate support grant has been adjusted. Anglesey will be materially better off. I remind hon. Members that a penny rate raises only £16,400 in Anglesey compared with other more fortunate and wealthier areas.
I have gone into the history of the Bill in some detail since it has been suggested that objectors have been given insufficient time to consider their reactions. I want them to have plenty of time. It is only right that we should ensure that in our democratic process any genuine objectors are given ample time to make their case.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet: Would the right hon. Gentleman answer two questions? What is the overall cost of the S.B.Ms., the storage tanks and pipelines, and from where is it anticipated that the oil would come? Is it eventually to come from the North Sea, or to come largely from the Middle East and Venezuela?

Mr. Hughes: I will not mention a figure at this stage for the overall cost, but my hon. Friend the Member for


Merioneth (Mr. William Edwards), who is a native of Amlwch will, I hope, catch Mr. Speaker's eye before the end of the debate and will provide that information. As to the source of the oil, obviously it will be the Middle East, which supplies crude oil in the main to this country, and Venezuela.
Regarding the North Sea and the concessions that have been granted and the finds now being made, here we have to define carefully where the North Sea is. We are talking not only about the sea off the east coast of England. These concessions are some 100 or 200 miles off the north coast of Scotland. Certainly when the oil is eventually piped to some terminal in the north of Scotland or Shetland, it may well have to be brought to a terminal such as Amlwch for piping to Stanlow.

Mr. Skeet: Up to what size tanker does Shell propose to use?

Mr. Hughes: I do not think that there is necessarily a limitation on the size of tankers which can use a single-buoy mooring. I said earlier that it is unlikely that Milford Haven can cope with tankers beyond 200,000 tons.

Mr. John Tilney: Would the right hon. Gentleman also agree that we may well find oil off the west coast of Britain?

Mr. Hughes: For Wales that would be a bonus. That is quite possible. But from what inexpert knowledge I have on this subject, I understand that concessions in what is interestingly called the Celtic Sea have not yet been made. These are matters for the future. I can now answer the first of the questions of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet). The overall cost will be about £50 million.
It has been suggested that the present planning procedures are unsuitable for this kind of project and that the fact that the seaward project needs a Private Bill while the landward works are subject to a planning procedure creates an unevenness of treatment and places a financial burden on objectors. My experience on the Bill and the planning inquiry, and on previous Bills over a long period in the House, for example, the Amoco Bill, which affected Pembrokeshire, inclines me to agree that

the present procedures call for further examination by Parliament. It is high time that we looked at these matters carefully. About three weeks ago an interesting debate took place in another place on this subject.
I hope that hon. Members will agree that this is no reason why Anglesey should be butchered to make a lawyers' holiday or to prove a procedural point. It is proper to examine the Bill as a further example of why reform is needed. It would be wrong to penalise the Anglesey County Council on this Bill to prove a procedural point.
I believe—in this I have the overwhelming support of the elected members of the Anglesey County Council—that the construction of this terminal will be beneficial to the people of Anglesey in the ways I have described, that it will not impair our environment, of which we are proud, and that it will tend to reduce and not increase the risk of pollution to all the coasts surrounding Liverpool bay and North Wales.
Finally, the House may feel that it is in the national interest that this project, which will put Britain ahead of the North West European oil terminals, should go ahead. Britain cannot afford to pass up chances of improving our competitive rating in any field, least of all energy, which enters into our entire national life.
If the Bill receives a Second Reading, there will be a further ample opportunity for detailed examination in the Select Committee, and in due course there will be the Third Reading. I understand also that there will be a substantial interval between this debate and the setting up of the Select Committee, which will give ample time for all concerned to prepare. In the light of all these considerations, I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

7.51 p.m.

Mr. John Farr: I congratulate the right, hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) on the manner in which he propounded the Second Reading of the Bill. I can well understand why Wales is so rich in folklore when a man of the calibre of the right hon. Gentleman has obviously allowed the enthusiasm he possesses for this project to inspire him in what he has told us tonight.
I accept without reservation most of what the right hon. Gentleman said, though possibly he allowed exaggeration to creep in in one or two instances, especially in his praise for single-buoy mooring. I think it is correct—the right hon. Gentleman will know this probably better than I—that this is the first time that a single-buoy mooring has been utilised in Britain in the open sea. It is no use the House being told that the Anglesey County Council has been to the Humber Estuary to look at the single-buoy mooring of Hull, which is in sheltered eastern waters and not in an exposed open sea position such as off the coast of Anglesey.

Mr. J. T. Price: My right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) referred to the single-buoy mooring in the Humber Estuary. I was there only last week and I can say from recent observation that it is not a single-buoy mooring. It is a large platform at the end of a type of long revetment which has been built out into the sea. It is not a single-buoy mooring in the sense of what is conventionally described as a single-buoy mooring.

Mr. John Prescott: I understand the point being made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price), but he may be confusing what my right hon. Friend was talking about with a pier for one of our oil loading points. Most certainly we have a single- or mono-buoy mooring. It is about five miles out in the Humber in the middle of the shipping lanes. I assure hon. Members that it is on exactly the same principle as the one for Anglesey.

Mr. Farr: May I conclude this exchange by pointing out that the Humber Estuary is not the open sea? The new S.B.M. off the Anglesey coast would be an innovation in these waters.
The second point on which the right hon. Gentleman allowed his enthusiasm to run away with him was in connection with the employment which would be occasioned by the scheme in Anglesey. He said that 60 new jobs would be definitely provided in Anglesey if the scheme went ahead, plus possibly 30 or 40 extra jobs. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell

the House how many of the 60 new jobs are likely to be filled by Anglesey people? Will not many of them be for very skilled technicians of the type not normally available in the pool of unemployed labour in Anglesey?

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is putting his case reasonably. The assurances that I have received from the Anglesey County Council and from Shell U.K. are that a very great proportion of the 100 jobs will be filled by local people. The hon. Gentleman will bear in mind that Anglesey is a maritime county with great experience in these matters. Therefore there will be available within the county, and I hope in Amlwch, men who are wholly competent to do most of the jobs that will be available. Certainly key workers will be required, but I understand that the number will be few.

Mr. Farr: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for taking up that point.
Before I go further, it is proper for me to declare an interest in that I am a holder of Shell ordinary shares, though I am not sure that Shell will benefit or lose by this venture.
I want to deal in particular with two aspects. The first can be described as a national aspect: whether a terminal of this nature is needed now or is likely to be needed within the next five or 10 years or as far ahead as one can see. The second aspect can be described as more of a local, Anglesey matter.
If the terminal is needed, what effect is it likely to have on Anglesey, a county which is loved and admired not only by Welshmen? As the right hon. Gentleman said, Anglesey is visited by myriads of tourists. They come mostly from England. We are very attracted by and attached to Anglesey, if we may be permitted to say so.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: We are always delighted to see tourists.

Mr. Farr: Looking at the Bill with what I will describe as the nation's interests in mind, I think the House will agree that a nation which has more than 6,000 miles of coastline and which is totally surrounded by the open sea has a greater right than any other nation to be concerned about the safety of its


waters and the shipping lanes that run so close to its shores.
In recent years we have been made all too well aware of the grave risks of pollution which, for instance, the "Torrey Canyon" disaster caused in the South-West, the recent oil pollutions in the Channel waters, the sinking of the "Germania" in the last 12 months and the poison canisters in the South-West.
So frequent has the risk of contamination by oil become that in recent years all our South Coast English Channel towns have had to train and equip special squads to deal with oil disposal en masse. Today there are few Channel towns where one can walk from one end of the shore to the other without getting the soles of one's feet covered in a black film of oil.
That black film of oil is also the lifeblood of our industry. We must get it here with the minimum amount of spillage. I understand that the promoters of the Bill, as the right hon. Member for Anglesey has said, believe that they will achieve this with a single-buoy mooring off the Anglesey coast which will handle fewer vessels of a greater capacity than would otherwise be the case.
The right hon. Gentleman will agree with me that, although fewer vessels will be handled, the result of an accident will be consequently greater. Oil as a source of energy plays a vital rôle and, as a result of the miners' strike, it is likely to increase in importance. Since Shell commenced the project we are discussing, the potentialities of the North Sea oilfields and the fields adjacent to the North Sea or off the East Coast or North-East Coast have greatly increased.
In November last year my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister estimated that by 1980 the British sector of the North Sea alone would be supplying 1½ million barrels of crude oil a day. That represents three-quarters of our present oil needs. Since the project was commenced it has become apparent from revised North Sea figures that from 1975 there will be a steady decline in the quantity of crude oil that we have to import. By 1980 it is estimated that the national requirement for imported oil will be well below the present level. Shell has argued that it must expand its refining capacity at Stanlow to 30 million tons by 1990,

and hence this project incorporating construction of a 70-mile pipeline. For the purposes of North Sea oil Stanlow can be considered an East Coast refinery and within five years the cheapest way of getting oil to it will be by pipeline from the North Sea. 
In addition, the fuel consumption of the part of the country served by Stan-low is growing less, as has been shown by recent statistics, than any other part of the country. If we join the E.E.C. with the natural tendency of our industry to drift more and more towards the Contenental coastline, that trend is likely to be accelerated. Therefore, in the light of the rapidly changing pattern of energy supply and the country's requirements, the need for a single-buoy mooring facility at Anglesey is not established. It appears only to be asking for trouble to establish this magnet for mammoth tankers two of three miles off our coast, attracting vessels into, through and across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The alternative is for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board to be allowed to take up its offer to import up to 28 million tons of crude oil a year through its existing Tranmere terminal in vessels of up to 90,000 tons.

Mr. Skeet: It would seem that the United Kingdom refineries are conditioned by such products as fuel oil, the primary fuel required, which has to be drawn from the Middle East and Venezuela. That need cannot be satisfied by North Sea oil, which is a lighter oil, a large part of which would not necessarily come to the United Kingdom but would be sold on the European market. All the assumptions would have to be based on oil being drawn from far afield in larger tankers rather than in small vessels.

Mr. Farr: As usual, my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) makes a very cogent point and I am well aware of the expertise he brings to bear on these matters. He has studied them for a long time. But without this proposed new terminal in Anglesey there will be ample facilities for getting coarse crude oil from the existing terminal from B.P. at Milford Haven and through the gigantic Gulf terminal which is only half used, and to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, in Bantry Bay.

Mr. Tilney: Does my hon. Friend agree that if his suggestion was carried out, and many more ships used the Mersey, there would be much greater danger of collision resulting in much greater pollution which could be swept throughout Liverpool Bay?

Mr. Farr: I referred to that earlier. With more vessels there is a great likelihood of collision, while fewer vessels of a larger size would mean less likelihood of collision. But sooner or later, as happened with the "Torrey Canyon", a collision of large vessels will occur and the consequences will be infinitely worse.
I turn to the local effects in Anglesey as I and other admirers of the area see them. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Anglesey. I know how diligent he is in the House in his attention to constituency affairs. We admire him for that and recognise and respect how close he is to his constituents in all matters. He is in favour of the Bill, as is his local county council, whose joint views must carry considerable weight on both sides. On the other hand, being fair-minded the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that the objectors to the Bill are also weighty and are people of considerable consequence. This cannot be treated as a purely Anglesey affair when, for instance, the Central Electricity Generating Board is an objector, when the two adjacent county councils of Cheshire and Flintshire are objectors, when the Anglesey branch of the N.F.U., the N.F.U. in Wales, the National Trust and many others are also official objectors.

Mr. Goronwy Roberts: The hon. Member mentioned objections by certain counties. The county council I represent, which is the most adjacent of all, that of Caernarvonshire, has definitely and unanimously decided to give full support for the proposal that the Anglesey County Council should proceed with the Bill.

Mr. Farr: I am delighted to hear that and I am quite sure the right hon. Member for Anglesey will also be delighted. Nevertheless, I would like to mention two chief points which concern the objectors who live in or adjacent to Anglesey. It is not simply the construction of a crude oil tank farm of 200 acres set in one of the most delightful parts of Anglesey which has caused their apprehension. It

is not the additional shore station, bunker tanks and pipeline across Anglesey to which they object. They fear that if this single-buoy terminal is established in Anglesey it will be the commencement of a pattern which, they believe, was originally begun in Milford Haven. There the B.P. terminal came first and now there are four refineries. In spite of the assurances of the Anglesey County Council the objectors fear that this will happen again, in their part of the world.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: Let us get the record straight. It was the Esso refinery which came first, not the B.P. terminal and my hon. Friend should not draw false conclusions.

Mr. Farr: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. There has been a big difference at Milford Haven in the last few years since the terminal and the four refineries arrived.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: The hon. Member has made a very important point, and now is the moment to strike the charge on the head. The most categorical assurances have been given by Shell (U.K.) that there is no intention whatever of building a refinery in Anglesey, primarily because it would not be regarded as an economic proposition, for the reasons I gave in my speech. I would certainly oppose it and the planning authority, the county council, would be thoroughly and totally opposed to it and would not be prepared to consider any planning application along those lines. Perhaps the hon. Member would bear that in mind.

Mr. Farr: I will certainly bear in mind what the right hon. Gentleman has said and I hope that if this planning permission and the Bill go through, he does not live to regret what he has said tonight.
Fears exist about spillage and contamination of the coastal waters as a result of the pumping from a point two to three miles offshore of about 30 million tons of crude oil a year and the pumping of an unspecified amount of engine oil for bunkering vessels from the bunkering tanks to the vessels lying at the single-buoy moorings. This is why the C.E.G.B. has seen fit to object in respect of the nuclear power station at Wylfa.

Mr. Gordon Oakes: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the risk of spillage is far greater when bunkering is done in the open sea rather than at a modern terminal such as my right hon. Friend described?

Mr. Farr: I am coming on to the point about the likelihood of spillage. Everyone wants to reduce the pollution of our coastal waters by oil as much as possible. It is generally accepted that a loading S.B.M. terminal carries a far greater risk of spillage than a discharge S.B.M. such as we are discussing. It has been estimated that the risk of spillage from a loading terminal is about three or four times as great. If the Bill goes through, I hope that loading, other than bunkering, from the terminal will be forbidden.
It will be the first single-buoy mooring terminal in the open sea in this country. At Shell's last such terminal in Durban, which was completed in 1970, during 12 months ended last September 23 spillages were recorded from only 91 discharge operations. One can judge by that just how much contamination will or will not arise from the establishment of such a facility off Anglesey.

Mr. Prescott: Would the hon. Gentleman care to state the amounts of those spillages? We know them in total but we have certain evidence that on some occasions they amounted to one pint of oil as opposed to the more serious spillages measured in tons. The important question is how much oil is spilt, and the answer to that may create a problem for the hon. Gentleman's argument.

Mr. Farr: In the 23 spillages at the new S.B.M. terminal at Durban during the 12 months ended last September, the total amount of oil spilt was only 57 tons. But the records for all the S.B.M. terminals in the world over the past 10 years give instances of spillages with individual cases measured in thousands of tons.
It is strange to realise that our debate will be a waste of time if planning permission is not given for the proposed tank farm and shore station. A local inquiry has been held and the inspector's report has been submitted for decision. I hope that before the Bill goes any further, assuming it is given a Second Reading,

the Minister's decision will be made known and the inspector's report made available for both Houses to consider in their further deliberations on the Bill.

8.13 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: An Englishman intervenes in an issue affecting Wales with some trepidation, and that is especially so in my case as there are close to me a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends who clearly, and understandably, support the Bill.
I put my name to the objection to the Bill because I believed it right that we should have this debate, which might otherwise not have taken place, and because I thought it important that the Committee that will consider the full details of the Measure should have the opportunity to hear the views expressed here, not because I have taken up a position of complete opposition to the proposal, which is of great concern and originality.
We are dealing with a proposal involving three different operations in a sense. First, there is the marine installation, which requires the Bill. Secondly, there is the considerable land installation, which has required a local inquiry. Although a transcript was kindly made available to us, we do not yet have the inspector's report, and so we do not know what the result of that local inquiry will be. Thirdly, there is the pipeline from the land installation.
It is somewhat difficult when several of the inquiries that have taken place already have been obliged to look at a single facet of the problem instead of the whole. Therefore, I understand the suggestion made at one time that this would appear to be an admirable case for a planning commission to be set up, such as was envisaged in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1968. I fully understand the Government's unwillingness to make provision for such an inquiry, however. We all know the experience of the Stansted inquiry, which became a national affair, and almost an international affair. It cost a great deal and took a great deal of time, and at the end of the day we did not accept the findings. We face the difficulty of three separate operations, and a third inquiry in relation to the pipeline might well be required under our town and country planning legislation.
We appreciate that the matter is particularly complex from everyone's point of view—from the point of view of those that want to carry it out and those that have very proper anxieties that should be expressed. We have been told that the major county affected, Anglesey, is promoting the Bill. We understand its concern. I at any rate, representing a constituency with more than 15 per cent. of the men out of work, understand very well the problem of unemployment. But none of us is entitled to look at the question solely from one point of view. We must also assure ourselves that we have given adequate thought to other factors that concern the people of Anglesey as well as people who live elsewhere. Anglesey has a great attraction for many people from England as well as from Wales. Therefore, one of the considerations should be the effect of the operation, as far as we can judge it, upon the tourist industry of Anglesey. We must keep that in mind as well as the modest employment prospects it offers. No one has suggested that it might make more than a relatively modest contribution, though I well know that modest contributions are gratefully received.
I declare an interest, being on the Executive of the National Trust, which, after careful consideration and consultation with its local branches and members in the area, has decided to join in the opposition to the proposal. Here again there is the national aspect, for which the National Trust must accept some responsibility. It is the responsibility of the National Trust to ensure, in every way possible, that the heritage of areas in close proximity to the scheme are guarded, and they would certainly be affected if any spillages were to occur. It is not only the right but the duty of the National Trust to see that the most careful consideration is given to the views of those concerned with the protection of these areas.
There are other reasons, too. Some have been referred to by the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr). One cannot just dismiss some serious questions about the whole economic proposition—whether, indeed, it makes national or even international sense to go ahead with this scheme and the very large investment by Shell. Many people will say that Shell is the best body to decide.

Whether that makes sense or not, I am not always impressed by such a view. I do not take the simplist view that private companies of this gradiose size always know best. They are as liable to make mistakes as anyone else.
I have in mind the not so wildly different proposition for potash mining in North Yorkshire, when a major inquiry took place. To my deep regret, the Labour Government gave authority for potash mining to go ahead in the area of the North Yorkshire National Park. One project has started, but in considering the other two projects the companies have, after fighting hard for the right to develop potash mining, accepted the arguments put by economists who were brought in by the objectors. These economists said that the whole thing was mad economically and that there is not a market.
The firms have agreed now that there is no market and have said, "Thank you for the opportunity of development, but we have decided that there is not much likelihood of going ahead with the scheme, at any rate for a long time to come."
That experience suggests that we should not in this case merely accept the commercial judgment of Shell but that we have every right to consider whether there is any other evidence that we should take into account as well. We have had evidence put before us, whose soundness I am in no position to judge, but which I am concerned should be heard, by Professor Odell, who was at one time an economic adviser to Shell. He strongly holds that the situation as it has developed does not warrant this kind of operation. It is very important that that view should be heard by the Committee. It is unfortunate that, although Professor Odell appeared as a witness before the land inquiry, we do not yet know the verdict of the inquiry. I assume—no doubt the Minister will tell us—that we shally know the result and have the inspector's report about the land part of the operation long before the scheme goes to the Committee.
That is one advantage of the rather long pause which is to take place before the Committee begins to take evidence and consider the matter. I am sure that we can expect to get some assurance on that point from the Minister. It would be


wrong for the Committee to go ahead with its examination without some report and view on the land installation aspects. This again is an illustration of the difficulty of handling a proposition which involves both offshore and land proposals.
I welcome the opportunity for this exchange of views in the House and the fact that it has been reasonably friendly. It has given us the opportunity to make clear our principal anxieties so that we can have some assurance that these matters are examined with care in the Committee before we make our final decision on the Bill. We cannot proceed simply on the say-so of this great undertaking, much as we respect its knowledge and commercial experience. We have a right to express our own judgments and anxieties.

8.27 p.m.

Mr. John Tilney: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) as a mere Englishman, but the Mersey has been mentioned and those concerned not only with the Port of Liverpool but with the employment situation in Cheshire and Lancashire are very much interested in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman said that we should not accept the commercial judgment of Shell and pointed out that there may be other than, economic points of view. I accept that argument. Surely, however, if one can keep or even improve the amenities and at the same time provide oil cheaper than otherwise, this is of benefit to the whole community. I believe that it can be done in this case.

Mr. Blenkinsop: I do not think we should accept the commercial judgment of Shell without challenge. Perhaps it is right, but we need to check.

Mr. Tilney: I am not objecting to that. On balance the House will find that the argument for the Bill will be proved. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) in supporting the Second Reading. The only thing he left out was the fact that 80 per cent. of the products of Stanlow are for industrial and public service use including the generation of electricity. It is of immense importance. The River Mersey is a twisting estuary limited to ships of only about 90,000 tons. The big tankers

have to be lightened in Liverpool Bay with consequent risk of spillage.
I am told that the Mersey pilots have said that they would regard the prospects of an accident as being greatly reduced if the single-buoy mooring terminal were placed near Amlwch. It is common knowledge that Amlwch will probably be the best location in the whole of North-West Europe for such a buoy. Many hon. Gentlemen have spoken of amenities. I live in Liverpool and from my bedroom window I have a fine view in the distance of Stanlow and in the opposite direction of the Dingle oil tanks. No one can say that they are beautiful.
Between the oil tanks and our house there are quite a number of oil tanks which have been buried and one is hardly aware of their existence. I am told that the Anglesey area is largely rock and that it would be expensive to bury such tanks and difficult to plant trees around. However, it may be that they can be camouflaged. Surely in these days of great earth-moving equipment it is possible to move earth over the tanks, even if we cannot sink them into the ground, thus creating artificial hills.

Mr. Farr: Is my hon. Friend aware that each of these tanks, and they number about 13 or 15, is twice the size of Conway Castle?

Mr. Tilney: I hope that my hon. Friend will come and see the tanks that were buried several decades ago at Liverpool. They are very large, too, and even if there is a tank twice the size of Conway Castle there is no reason why it should not be covered over. It may be more expensive, but we have to weigh up the cost against the benefits involved. I hope, too, that the pipes will be buried and that we will not have a series of pipes running over the countryside such as can be seen in other countries.
In 10 years' experience of the operation of single-buoy moorings in various parts of the world, many of them in waters as rough as are ever likely to be experienced at Anglesey, there have been few examples of major pollution. One has been in operation in the Humber for 13 months. Attached to every buoy there will be a 75-ft. launch equipped with 30 tons of dispersant and a considerable amount of spraying equipment. That does not apply today when ships are being lightened.


Ships will be able to operate in wave heights of up to at least 6 ft. In wave heights in excess of this the operations will cease although the big ships will be unaffected by these conditions. That means that probably for 35 days in every year the single-buoy mooring will be out of action. The fundamental concern, once amenities are protected, is that we should have cheap oil for the benefit of employment in Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire and elsewhere in the North, so that we may improve employment prospects.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. J. T. Price: I beg to offer a few sceptical thoughts to the House on this important Bill which is under discussion, and the fact that only a handful of hon. Members have been attracted to this debate does not lessen its importance.
Although a number of my hon. Friends who represent Welsh constituencies are here to support the Bill, I am not convinced that what we are debating is confined to the geographical boundaries of Wales because this issue is concerning all advanced countries of the world as the oil industry becomes an ever-expanding element in our economic affairs.
I have many friends in the oil industry, and nothing I say should be taken as antagonistic towards them. I appreciate that they are expert professional people in their own right. But when I hear—with the pleasure that it always gives us to hear him—my right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) speak in such amiable and reasonable terms in support of the Measure, I wonder whether he and others have asked themselves a number of questions which should be answered in considering a Bill of this kind.
A matter which is bound to be of interest to the Select Committee is the question whether anyone has stopped to ask if the world needs 200,000 or 300,000 ton tankers, or tankers of whatever goal the marine engineers are planning for these monsters. The very mechanics of this operation and the mere conception of these vast vessels is of serious concern to people throughout the world, for vessels of this size are regarded as a menace to shipping, particularly in estuarial waters.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) knows more about this subject than probably any hon. Member. He will agree that a Private Members' Bill is before the House with the aim of bringing greater safety to the Humber by providing for increased and more efficient pilotage for small vessels which would not need to employ pilots but for the existence of the enormous hulks which we are discussing. This is a matter of wisdom and planning for the future of the environment in which we are going to live.
I am not a crude conservationist in these matters. I realise that we must have the economic resources to sustain our island people and I never stand in the way of any rational attempt to do that. Nevertheless, I am entitled to ask not only whether the world should continue to build ever-increasingly large tankers which are creating a menace to shipping throughout the world, and particularly in confined waters like ours, but also for how long the world will tolerate a situation in which indigenous forms of fuel such as we have-200 years of proved resources of coal lying beneath our feet —should go untapped. Twenty years ago our coal industry was manned by 750,000 men whereas today it has fewer than 280,000, as the recent strike made us well aware.
The great oil companies have so organised things that they can exploit their expertise and interests to the full. Should we ignore the possibility that we may one day have to use our indigenous resources of fuel? This is a matter of judgment and I am not dogmatic. On the one hand we can go on destroying the ecology by allowing vast terminals and their attendant equipment and subsidiary industries to be established—as I saw in the Southampton Water, which I inspected recently in another capacity—or we can look harder at the geographical and political instability of the world and think in terms of using our own natural resources.
Whatever may be said about the superiority of oil over coal or coal over oil as a fuel, and the greater convenience of oil, the fact remains that the sources of oil are in such unstable parts of the world that we may by the sheer force of economic circumstances be driven to


stop yielding to the blackmail of Arab sheiks exploiting their oil, as they, for their own purposes in their own countries, are entitled to do.
I put this to the House merely in an interrogatory way. I am not putting it in a dogmatic way. I never say anything in a dogmatic way in this House, as my hon. Friends know. Nevertheless, I put it that these vast plans which oil technologists and technicians are presenting should not be taken for granted. I know that my Welsh friends are more swayed by emotion than by reason, if I may say that without disrespect.

Mr. William Edwards: £50 million?

Mr. Price: My hon. Friend says £50 million. I do not know whether that was heard by the HANSARD reporters. There is a question I should like to ask about it. Not even this massive investment of £50 million will necessarily all be to the advantage of Anglesey. On my right hon. Friend's own admission it will provide at the most 100 jobs of a permanent character for the people of Anglesey as a contribution towards overcoming unemployment many times as much. Of course, Anglesey will get considerable rateable value and capital assets and so on out of these proposals, but in terms of employment the economic return to Anglesey does not seem very great. I put it to my right hon. Friends in the most amiable and friendly way. I have been long enough a Member of this House to remember the day when we had the great debate about a great project sponsored by the Central Electricity Generating Board, a power station at Trawsffynydd in Merionethshire. It was to be the salvation of Wales. Has it made any salient impression on Welsh unemployment? I went there when the station was being built. It was like Rocky Mountain rhythm. It was on the soggy moor at the back of Rhinog Fawr and Rhinog Fach, in an upland valley behind those hills, and there were miles of wooden huts for the workmen, but not full of Welshmen, full of Irishmen: they were the building labourers.
I am extremely sceptical about all this. I said at the beginning that I was making a few sceptical remarks. I think that many of these ambitious and enthusiastic

forecasts will not be borne out in the event.
I have no intention of taking up much of the time of the House in this debate, and in any case the Bill will be examined in Committee, but there are these questions to be asked. Is the world wise in embarking on and encouraging the constant proliferation of the huge tankers of 200,000 or 300,000 tons? Will there not have to be miles of network of pipelines running all over the place, north, south, east and west? And not buried underground. We know already that because of the cost of transmission lines the Central Electricity Generating Board puts them overground on pylons. All the infrastructure will proliferate on the surface. There will be great tankers, and transport which will cut through towns, to—

Mr. Skeet: rose—

Mr. Price: Let me finish the sentence and not end with a preposition. I merely put it it to the House that in view of the tremendous uncertainty of oil supplies in the world it is time that we in this House set to work to give greater consideration to where the real balance of advantage lies between the various forms of fuel at our command. By doing that we should be considering the interests not only of our own generation but of generations to come.

Mr. Skeet: Surely the hon. Member must know we cannot build pipelines all over the country. We have to get planning consent and the consent of the Minister for over 10 miles. That is under the Pipe-lines Act, 1962. There are few in this country. Most of them are buried. Therefore, they are not an eyesore.

Mr. Price: I am obliged for what the hon. Member has said. I do not deny that one has to go through planning procedures, but anyone who has had to deal with planning procedures, as I have, will be just about fed up with them. On paper, it provides a safeguard for the public interest. In practice, it is so complex and technical that the public interest is always avoided by the most powerful voices and the professionally qualified advocates who put cases before tribunals. However, I do not make much of that, because it will only tempt me to continue my speech longer than I should.
I put these thoughts seriously before the House, and I hope that they will be considered carefully when and if the Bill goes to a Committee upstairs.

8.45 p.m.

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. David Gibson-Watt): It may be convenient if I intervene at this stage, in no way wishing to curtail debate, but to answer one question from the point of view of the Welsh Office and to deal with a number of matters which right hon. and hon. Members have raised.
This is a Private Bill. The Government are neutral on its merits, and I must be neutral, too. But this has been a fascinating debate to listen to, certainly for anyone who has any responsibility for or interest in the problems of Wales.
This is a cross-party issue, and certainly I have no intention of being caught in any kind of crossfire. However, it may be helpful if I try to clarify one point which has been raised by those hon. Members who have referred to certain related planning applications under consideration by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State.
The Bill is concerned with proposed off-shore installations; that is to say, the single-buoy moorings, submarine pipelines, a breakwater and jetties. None of these installations is subject to the Town and Country Planning Acts. Therefore, it was necessary for the promoters to seek parliamentary authority through this Bill. On the other hand, the related land-based installations are subject to the Acts, and therefore the promoters applied for planning permission in the ordinary way. My right hon. and learned Friend called in the most important application for his own decision. A public local inquiry was held in October and November, and the inspector's report is expected to be ready very shortly; it is hoped, within the next two weeks.
It has been suggested that the further progress of the Bill should be delayed until my right hon. and learned Friend has seen his inspector's report and come to his decisions on the planning application. It has been suggested also that it would be helpful if the decisions could be announced before the Bill is considered in Committee. It is right to point out on the suggestions that,

although the off-shore and on-shore installations would be closely related, operationally they raise rather different environmental considerations. The offshore proposals raise the question of possible oil pollution at sea. The on-shore proposals raise quite different questions of land use and visual impact in a mainly rural environment.
Nevertheless, the decisions will be taken as quickly as possible after the inspector's report is received. It will be the aim of my right hon. and learned Friend to announce his decisions before the Bill is considered in Committee. I am sorry that I cannot give an absolute guarantee that the decisions will be announced as requested. But it is not possible for me to go any further since the report is not yet available and since the issues involved are of considerable significance. However, there is every prospect that the decisions will be announced before the Bill goes to Committee, assuming that it finds favour with the House tonight.
It has also been suggested, rightly, by the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) that the Government should have referred the whole question of the Anglesey oil terminal to a planning inquiry commission. Under Section 62 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1968, the Government can refer to a planning inquiry commission only after planning applications, planning appeals and development proposals by Government Departments. Therefore, the offshore proposals would not have been referred to a planning inquiry commission. My right hon. and learned Friend took the view that it would not be appropriate to refer the related planning applications to a planning inquiry commission.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is it not true to say that if the land-based installation inquiry should result in the Minister turning down the project the whole Bill falls and therefore it is important to try to ensure that the decision is known before the Committee stage?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I gave way to the hon. Gentleman because I thought that he proposed to speak about the planning inquiry commission. I am sure that he will forgive me if I merely say in answer to him that I cannot go further than I have. My words were used with reason,


and there is every prospect that the decision will be announced before the Bill reaches Committee.
It must be borne in mind that the planning inquiry commission procedure, which is bound to be heavyweight and long drawn out, is intended for use only in exceptional circumstances defined in the 1968 Act. My right hon. and learned Friend took the view that the conditions laid down in the Act for the appointment of a public inquiry commission were not satisfied in the Amlwch case.
I have made those three specific points purely to help the Committee in its deliberations.

8.52 p.m.

Mr. Eric Ogden: My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) suggested that Englishmen intervene—and I use the word "intervene" and not "interfere"—in a debate on Welsh affairs only with some trepidation. My hon. Friend the Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) shot that suggestion down in flames. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) has also shown an interest in this matter.
It is easier for us to intervene in these matters when we appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) and other right hon. and hon. colleagues of mine who represent constituencies in North Wales, whilst being passionate defenders of the interests, welfare and well-being of their constituents, are reasonable men who will accept that this Bill has much wider implications than the implications it has for their own areas. That it is not only the right but the responsibility of other hon. Members of this Parliament of the United Kingdom to take an interest in these matters, provided it be a constructive interest. That is what some of us are trying to do. The hon. Member for Wavertree represents a Liverpool constituency where we are never backward in coming forward. It is said we have more Welshmen in our city than has Cardiff. Forty per cent. of my constituents are of Welsh blood.
The House is fairly full for this kind of debate and there are Englishmen among us who love to have the opportunity, which comes too rarely, to go to North Wales to enjoy the amenities there

—not the "caravan desert", stretching along the North Wales coast, but parts such as Lligwy Bay, Amlwch, Cemaes Bay and my favourite mini-mountain, Mynydd Bodaffon.
I speak as a Merseyside Member. The hon. Member for Wavertree will remember that three years ago we were invited to a meeting at the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board to meet representatives of the Board and the Shell Oil Co. to hear them explain a new Bill which they proposed to put forward to follow the example of the British Empire to extend the bounds of Merseyside "wider still and wider" and to include the water off the Anglesey coast. The Shell representatives were not prepared to tell us the cost of the scheme or how it would work. Perhaps they did not know, but I believe they did not want to say what they thought at that time, since they had not thought through all the implications.
We were told this evening that the total cost of the scheme will be about £50 million, but I estimate that the amount of money which will be spent in Anglesey on the buoy mooring will be around £2 million to £5 million. There will be expenditure of around £1 million for the cost of the terminal, another £10 million for the tank farm—though this is excluded from the Bill—and the rest of the expenditure will be in respect of the pipeline to take the oil through North Wales into England. Some 40 or 45 per cent. of the expenditure will be taxpayers' money. The whole of the sum will not be borne by the Shell Company, but will be eligible for investment grants in one way or another. Since there is 45 per cent. of Government investment, I find it difficult to see how the Government spokesman can say that he is neutral. He cannot be neutral over the investment of £20 to £25 million of taxpayers' money. He has to take a positive interest, and should have been more forthcoming with the House.
When the Bill was presented three years ago it was apparent that this was being done by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board in partnership with the Shell Company. This appeared to be in our interest on Merseyside and there was the beginning of an agreement. This matter has provoked interest over a wide area. I have had correspondence from Essex, North Wales. South Wales and


Lancashire from people who want to see how the matter has progressed. The matter has been fully discussed by hon. Members who have been interested.
I should like to have some assurances on this Bill as it affects Liverpool and Merseyside. Anybody who has any knowledge of ports knows that the basic income of the port of Merseyside is in the form of oil revenues. Dry goods, such as cars and heavy goods are supportable in the present cost situation only by reason of the fact that a substantial measure of oil revenue goes into Merseyside. The message we received when the consultations were taking place on the scheme some three years ago was that this scheme would increase oil revenues and would make Merseyside more viable as a port. If the total capacity of Stanlow is to extend in the way envisaged by Shell, then the capacity will increase from 10 million tons per annum up to 18 million tons in 1973 to 1975, and up to 25 million tons per annum in the 1980s. A share of that increase could still come in through Merseyside. Therefore, Merseyside could still see an increasing oil revenue year by year.
My concern in terms of the Bill is that adaptation to accommodate an oil terminal for super tankers will cause a reduction in the number of smaller tankers using Tranmere.

Mr. J. T. Price: My hon. Friend mentioned the super tanker. Surely the super tanker as it is at present built is a pure accident related to the Suez Canal. If the Suez Canal had not been closed some years ago because of political events, then the need for such super tankers to carry crude oil around the Cape would not have arisen. I hope that this situation will not continue for ever, and I am sure that every merchant seaman would agree with that sentiment.

Mr. Ogden: I do not wish to argue the merits and demerits of the super tanker. Although the closing of the Suez Canal has had an effect on the situation, the closing of the Suez Canal increased Western interest in super tankers able to use the Cape route more economically, but I would point out that oil was being taken from the Middle East to Japan by super tanker long before the Suez Canal was closed. These are the facts of life.
They have to be lived with for the foreseeable future. This buoy is one of the results of the technical changes coming along.
I want an assurance—I do not know whether an assurance can be given— that the establishment of the buoy will not mean a reduction in the amount of traffic coming into the Mersey, a reduction in the number of tugs required, a reduction in the number of transfers of ships, and a reduction in the way that tankers come into the Mersey and are now supplied from Merseyside, because they may just come off-shore to Anglesey, turn round and never come to Merseyside.
Obviously any local Member must be concerned about the effect on employment in his constituency. If both Anglesey and Merseyside are to share in an ever-increasing amount of oil coming into Stanlow, that would be acceptable to the North-West. It is not a coal fuel emphasis; it is an industrial emphasis all the way along. I have some reservation on that, which has not been mentioned in any way in the Shell briefs, but if it is part of an expanding market I am sure that we can come to terms.
My second interest is as a private citizen who goes to North Wales when he can enjoy the first-class amenities and warm welcome. It is not by chance that an ex-Member of this House, Mrs. Slater, now lives at Bull Bay, Amlwch. She knows the warmth and friendship of the people there. I can climb that glorious mountain, Mynyd Bodafon, which is about the right size for me to climb. I do not want anything to spoil that.
I am concerned about the siting of the tank farm, but that is excluded from the Bill. We have to rely on Members to look after interests there. The old harbour of Amlwch looks a true place for pirates and wreckers, not the Pirates of Penzance, but no one in North Wales ever landed £50 million before. I should not like it to become a Brighton Marina. I do not want a plastic palace on top of the grey-green slates which form the harbour wall.
Changes can and have been made in the Bill. The good which can come out of it outweighs any harm which might come from it. Page 2 of Part 2 of the Bill says that the primary case for establishing the sea buoy is for navigational purposes and the economic import


of oil. I think that is stretching it a bit far. I think it might be the other way round. It is not there primarily for navigational purposes, but that is a minor point which can be argued in Committee.
If the Anglesey County Council and the Shell Company, and the people of Anglesey require help and co-operation from Merseyside, I am sure it will be forthcoming. On that basis I will not oppose the Bill. I will support it if my right hon. Friend needs my support.

9.3 p.m.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: I shall not detain the House long. I want to speak purely about the pollution aspect of the scheme and the threat that it poses to holiday interests along the North Wales coast, of which Conway has a very fair—some might say the fairest—share, extending as it does from the Nice of the North-West, Llandudno, to the Athens of Wales, Bangor. Between those two delightful townships we have other populous holiday centres: Conway, Penmaenmaur and Llanfairfechan, with Port Dinorwic beyond.
All those communities depend on tourism for their livelihood, as indeed do many other communities in North Wales, which, it might interest hon. Members to know, in the year ended 31st March, 1971, attracted no fewer than 1,875,000 holidaymakers, according to the Annual Report of the Wales Tourist Board. The impact of the holiday season on Llandudno, for example, has to be seen to be believed. Its population of 17,000 swells in the summer months to over 100,000. Its income from this source is estimated at £5 million and I believe that Anglesey has a slightly bigger total income from tourism. The great attraction to these holidaymakers is the beauty of clean sea, blue skies and the hinterland of Snowdonia beyond.
I well remember—and I am sure that the right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) does too—the consternation in the resorts in July last year when it was announced on the radio that about 400 tons of crude oil had seeped from the 200,000-ton Shell tanker "Merissa" while she was off-loading about 90,000 tons into the "Drupa", another Shell tanker, off Moelfre on the Anglesey coast. As it happened, only 40 tons was spilled and the five-mile slick

was soon disposed of by the Holyhead tug "Afon Goch". There was no visible damage to the beaches or to bird life but the anxiety caused to holidaymakers and their hosts was very considerable. One wonders how long any resort can survive that kind of threat if it is constantly present.
These discharges from one tanker to another take place sometimes twice weekly off Anglesey, Bantry Bay and the Cherbourg Peninsula, but most frequently off Anglesey. The two tankers involved then proceed, as we have heard, to Tranmere for the final discharge. The argument that we have heard tonight is that it would be safer to off-load into a terminal than into another vessel because of the greater stability and the better facilities available to deal with possible spillages. It is also argued that discharge into a terminal would avoid the necessity of vessels proceeding to Tranmere and so lessen the danger of collision in the shipping lanes.
On the other hand, the proposed terminal is very close to the shore and if there were a spillage it would have to be dealt with very quickly indeed if beach pollution was to be avoided. Besides, this is a notoriously treacherous part of the coast and many vessels which have sought shelter there from the south-westerlies have been driven on to the rocks. Perhaps the most famous of them was the "Royal Charter", which was sunk in 1859. One must also bear in mind that the discharging tanker will be swinging, as it were, by a line from the terminal and may therefore be much nearer than two miles from the coast. Finally, as we have heard this evening there is talk of far larger tankers—up to half a million and 1 million tons—possibly using the terminal. Whatever their pros and cons from a safety standpoint, the prospect of their use increases rather than diminishes our fears in the resorts.
Nor are our fears allayed by the size of the land installations—the farm of 15 or 16 tanks each twice the size of Conway Castle, and the two 48-in. diameter pipelines to Stanlow. These dimensions alone tend to confirm that the terminal will have the capacity to handle 50 million tons per annum, two and a half times the 18 million-ton capacity of Stanlow as developed up to 1973, and greater, too, than the 30 million-ton capacity of


Stanlow that we have heard of as being possible in the 1990s. So what is the value of the assurance given to the Select Committee in the other place that the promoters
have no intention of building a refinery or a chemical plant or any other type of installation
apart from the installations referred to in the Bill or in current planning applications? The value that most of us will put on it is very low in the long term.
We would be wise to recognise that, as in the case of Milford Haven, once the terminal is established there will be further developments either at Anglesey or at Stanlow or on the pipeline route to cope with an increasing intake of oil via the terminal. With increased use there is increased danger of accident, spillage, collision and so on.
We have been asked where all this oil is to come from. Recent statements about developments in the North Sea and elsewhere suggest that we are very much on the verge of oil discoveries which Sir David Barran, Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Company, said might take the United Kingdom into self-sufficiency in terms of oil towards the end of the 1980s. Shell paid £21 million at last year's auction of potential oil blocks for one block alone, and I understand from Friday's Financial Times that about 270 more oil blocks off the Scottish coast and in the approaches to the Bristol Channel are to be put up for auction in the near future.
We have been referred to as a precious stone set in a silver sea, but it seems that we are set in a bed of oil. Sir David also said:
Indications are that North Sea oil, although of excellent quality and low in sulphur content, is light in specification and would not match United Kingdom product requirements, with their emphasis on heavy industrial oil … In practice, a considerable proportion of British oil is likely to be exported and counterbalanced by imports of heavier crude to make the right blend for the refineries.
So we can see the shape of things to come—a tremendous increase in oil tanker traffic to and from this country.
In view of the recent coal strike and the power cuts, we should as a nation rejoice that we have these reserves of oil off our shores, but let us be realistic about protecting those shores from the

dangers of pollution. Whatever we do, let us not desecrate the shores, and Welsh shores particularly, as the Welsh mining valleys were desecrated 100 years ago.
It is not good enough for Shell, with its high reputation, to have told the Select Committee that, so far as pollution went,
a scheme will be drawn up designed to meet this problem, so far as it concerns Anglesey, in the event of the Bill becoming law.
We should know what that scheme is today. It must be foolproof, to set our minds at rest.
I do not condemn my native county for promoting the Bill. It will get the contribution towards its revenue and some employment which is very much needed, but it must also be prepared to lose some of its income and employment from tourism. I hope that it does not, but it is certainly a possibility.
I wish that I could point to some possible gain for Caernarvonshire, but whatever gain there may be in the way of work in laying the pipes and rates on them afterwards, all this could be negligible compared with the loss of attraction if the beaches are subject to pollution. The loss may not be immediate but it could clearly be substantial over the years.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: Quite properly, the hon. Gentleman wants to protect the major resorts in his constituency. Looking over the next decade or two, does he believe that the interests of Llanfairfechan, Penmaenmawr and Llandudno will be better protected if the traffic to and from the Mersey increases, as it inevitably will if no single-mooring buoy is built off Llandudno? Is that what he wants? He has to make a choice and to say now to the House and to his constituents whether he considers they will be safer if there is no single-mooring buoy.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: The point I am making very strongly is that one is tremendously anxious on behalf of the whole North Wales coast that absolutely every protection and safeguard should be taken in the event of the terminal coming into being. That is where my emphasis lies.

Mr. Goronwy Roberts: As the hon. Gentleman has mentioned the county of which he and I share representation, would he address his mind to this point?


Perhaps he was not present when I reminded another hon. Member that our county council has gone on record as strongly supporting the Bill after the most careful examination of all the points that have been put before the House today, in particular the choice between the present system, which is a very dangerous one from the viewpoint of trying to avoid the result of spillage without even the help of permanent launches, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) explained will now become available, and the system which would obtain if an S.B.M. were installed off the shores of Anglesey. Will the hon. Gentleman now answer my right hon. Friend's question? Which of those two systems does he prefer?

Mr. Wyn Roberts: The right hon. Gentleman is certainly limiting the choice, and unnecessarily so. There are other choices too. Had we had perhaps the planning inquiry commission, those choices might have been revealed to us.
I was about to say that Caernarvonshire and Flintshire County Councils were to have petitioned against the Bill, but they have withdrawn after securing an agreement on compensation for the costs of combating any pollution that may occur. I understand, however, that the agreement covers only labour and materials employed. As the Town Clerk of Llandudno put it to me in a letter, the agreement
does not contemplate provisions to deal with ruined or damaged articles of clothing, spoiled days' outings, holiday disappointments and the consequent depressing effects on the resort industries, to say nothing of the underserved worries, anxieties and uncertainties when reported oil slicks, lurking out to sea, menace the holiday beaches.
This is the fear that is very much in their minds and this, too, is something of the shape of things to come.
I return to the main burden of my speech that we must do everything possible to prevent that nightmare from becoming a reality. There is the element of protection of the Oil in Navigable Waters Act and the Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollution) Act, with the maximum fine of £50,000 for negligence and other offences. On reading the Bill, I am glad to see that the terminal authority does not exempt itself from those Acts, but one would have liked to see rather more

awareness of the dangers of pollution on the part of the promoters of the Bill and the associated company and a willingness, too, to shoulder responsibility for damage outside the immediate area of the terminal. I hope that the Select Committee will take note of this and will prescribe stringent conditions for the operation of the terminal if the House sees fit to give the Bill a Second Reading.

9.20 p.m.

Mr. Gordon Oakes: I give unqualified support to my right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) and congratulate him on the excellent way in which he introduced the Bill. I do this for two reasons. One is that I am a Merseyside Member and many of my constituents work at the oil refinery at Stanlow. Many more of them, particularly those working in the building trade, which is at present very much a depressed industry on Merseyside, will find work if the extension takes place.
The hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Wyn Roberts) said that as a result of the Bill it may well be that there will be extensions, either in Anglesey or at Stanlow. My right hon. Friend said that they will not be in Anglesey. I hope that the extensions will take place at Stanlow, because we need the industry, we need the development, and we need the addition to the economy of North Cheshire and South Lancashire that such extensions would provide. This has a direct interest for my constituency—I speak as a Merseyside Member—although the refinery is across the water in Cheshire.
My second reason is that, as my right hon. Friend knows, I am one of the many Members of the House, apparently, who are very much in love with his constituency. I spend every available moment of my time in the summer in my right hon. Friend's constituency.
The main argument that we have heard from those who oppose the Bill concerns the very natural fear of pollution. The hon. Member for Conway said that his main criticism of the Bill was that he thought that not sufficient attention had been paid by either the promoters or by the company to the pollution aspect.
A tourist county such as Anglesey and my right hon. Friend representing that county are as much aware as, if not more


aware than, any hon. Member of the importance of tourism to that island. They have taken this very much into consideration, allied with the question of pollution, before promoting the Bill.
The company we are dealing with—Shell—is one of those companies that take a healthy interest in the question of pollution. One of its senior managing directors—Mr. Iliffe—serves on the Royal Commission which is considering pollution because of this intense interest from an industry point of view on the effects that industrial pollution can have on the environment.
I, like many other hon. Members, am very concerned about pollution and its effects. This is one of the reasons I support my right hon. Friend on the Bill. It is far safer for tankers to offload their oil at a terminal such as the one proposed than it is to attempt to offload oil on to smaller ships. In that way accidents happen, as the hon. Member for Conway has just described; that accident happened because there was no terminal. It happened because one ship, bobbing about in the water, was offloading on to another ship, which is a much more difficult task than is offloading, at a purpose-built marine terminal such as that described in the Bill.
The question of pollution lies at the root of it. There is far less risk of collision with a terminal and also far less risk of spillage. Oil tankers will get bigger and bigger. There are now tankers of between 200,000 and 300,000 tons. In Japan tankers of ½ million tons are in the shipyard. It is proposed that even bigger ships should be built.
Such ships will be built and they will carry oil economically. Unless we have a terminal such as this, the North-West, in which I include North Wales, will be by-passed. The areas to which ships will go will be to other parts of the United Kingdom or not in the United Kingdom at all.
The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) who opposes the Bill, said significantly that one of the things which might happen if Britain joined the Common Market was that there would be a shift of industry to the south-east of England. I agree and that is why I am opposed to the Common Market.

The more installations that are built in the north-west of England and North Wales, provided they are safe and every safeguard is given against pollution, the happier I shall be in the face of that immense competition from the South-East.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey made an excellent case for the Bill. As a Merseyside Member, affected by it and as a lover of his island, I would be the first to vote against it if there was any chance of that peaceful island being desecrated by pollution.
I hope the House will give a warm and clear Second Reading to this important and useful Bill, useful to an island which knows what disaster is like, because Anglesey only two years ago faced an economic disaster when its railway bridge was put out of use. The House should do something which could help redress that economic balance tonight.

9.27 p.m.

Sir Anthony Meyer: Like the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes), I am in favour of the Bill. Notwithstanding that, the campaign which has been lodged against the Bill has been a model of how such a campaign should be conducted. I take this opportunity of paying tribute to the way that I have been lobbied. It has been an excellent example of democracy at work. I wish I could say that the promoters of the Bill had been equally assiduous in putting forward their case. The right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) presented the case for the Bill superbly. I have not always found it easy to extract from Shell what exactly it is trying to do.
But having listened to the right hon. Gentleman, having studied the proceedings as carefully as I can and having read the debate in the other place with great care and attention, I am convinced that Shell has made out its case for the need for this facility in the interests of the United Kingdom as a whole. I believe the facility will decrease the risk of pollution by oil spillage along the North Wales coast and this is, of course, the area with which I am primarily concerned. It is not for me or for anybody outside Anglesey to pronounce on the environmental considerations affecting Anglesey, and I am content to accept


the view of the right hon. Gentleman in this matter.
One of the aspects which concern me is the risk of oil spillage and I am convinced that the practice of lightering from one tanker to another in the open sea is far more likely to produce spillage than the arrangements embodied in the Bill. I have heard, however, the rather impressive statistics produced by the objectors on spillage where single-buoy moorings are used for loading and not unloading. It appears that where these buoys are used for loading there is a considerably greater risk of spillage, even in small quantities, and small spillages frequently occur. I hope that as the Bill progresses through Committee the promoters will give a rather more categoric assurance than they have to date that this facility will be used solely for unloading. As I read it, the assurance they have given is somewhat hedged about and leaves more loopholes than it should.
The other aspect which concerns me is the route, and the layout and treatment of the pipeline which is to carry the oil from Anglesey. I totally reserve my freedom of action to object violently to any specific proposals for the route of the pipeline, particularly if anybody is to suggest such an awful thing as taking it on stilts across low-lying ground. Then I should be up in arms and, if the recent example were to be followed, I would be out with my stick of dynamite. The pipeline must be buried, but subject to that I am happy to support the Bill.

9.31 p.m.

Mr. David Lane: Before I explain why I support the Bill, may I declare a non-interest? I was employed by the Shell International Petroleum Company before I was elected, but I then resigned from it. I hope my judgment tonight is in no way influenced by my former connection with the company.
As another non-Welshman who is very fond of Anglesey I can understand the anxieties felt by some people about the effect of the proposal before us. But I am sure they are groundless. We should give the greatest weight to the views expressed by the right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) and the responsible local authority in the area.
These are times when the progress of technology raises some alarm about issues

of conservation and problems of the environment, and there may be instances when we should be content with a second-best technical solution in the interests of the environment. I am certain that this is not such a case and that the scheme will take full advantage of modern technology without the least risk to the Anglesey environment and with actual benefits to the wider environment of North Wales and North-West England.
There has been talk about the danger of spillage of oil at buoys of the kind proposed. But I understand that in its many years of operating single-buoy moorings of the type proposed Shell has unloaded 120 million tons from tankers with only three cases of very minor pollution of beaches. That puts the matter in perspective.
The tank farm will be very carefully landscaped. As to the pipeline, my experience of the construction of long pipelines for gas in East Anglia is that the work has been carried out without any permanent disturbance of the countryside.
On the future in Anglesey, we should accept the assurances already given by the company and the basic right of the local authority to oppose any further developments to which it might object.
The right hon. Member for Anglesey said enough about the country's general energy picture and our increasing dependence on oil. I do not need to repeat what he said, except to emphasise that the Stanlow refinery, which is to benefit from this development, is particularly well placed for the industrial heartland of the country. I understand that about 80 per cent. of its oil products go to industrial and public service use, including electricity generation. What we must decide is how best the enormously increased requirements of crude oil for Stanlow are to be delivered.
I support the proposal on two main grounds: it will provide the oil at the lowest unit cost to the refinery and at the lowest risk of pollution.
The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) asked whether the scheme made national sense. I remind him of the need to keep ourselves competitive with other industrial nations in terms of energy cost.
We have heard a great deal about the very large crude carriers. I will give


just two figures to the House to illustrate the economic advantages of making maximum use of the 300,000-ton carriers that will, I understand, be in service from 1974. Compared with the present 90,000-ton carriers, which are the largest that can be got up the Mersey, the capital cost of a 300,000-ton ship is about £18 million; the equivalent in terms of 90,000-ton ships would be about £25 or £30 million. Secondly, in terms of the operating cost of carrying one ton of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to North-West Europe in 1974, a 90,000-ton ship can carry it for £3·40 per ton and a 300,000-ton ship for £2·48—nearly £1 a ton or over 25 per cent. cheaper. This is an advantage not to be denied to our economy.
Secondly, we are going to do this at the lowest risk in terms of pollution. This has already been well put by hon. Members from the Mersey area, who can speak more directly on the subject than I can. On both counts, therefore, I am sure that we should support the scheme —lower unit costs and lower risk of pollution.
The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) wondered whether we were wise to rely on oil from overseas. The doubts expressed by Professor Odell, whose views on the future energy pattern of the country I take with the greatest reservation, are, I believe, wrong in this instance. We are going to need these very large ships in considerable numbers because, however successful the North Sea exploration, however well we can develop our natural gas resources, however much we can rely on coal and however successful the nuclear programme, we shall depend, as far ahead as we can foresee, on the Middle East for great quantities of oil, not least to make sure that we have the right blend of crude oil for the refineries. As two-thirds of the world's proven reserves are in the Middle East, and 90 per cent. of those reserves are in countries bordering the Persian Gulf, we must conclude that pipelines to the Mediterranean or the Suez Canal will not remove the need to use the Cape route, and it is on the Cape route that the advantages of very large carriers are seen at their greatest.
I refute the suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr.

Farr) that North Sea oil might be brought to Stanlow across the country by pipeline. It would be better to have the flexibility of marine transport, which could take place through the very large carriers using the unloading buoy at Anglesey.
I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister of State's assurance that the inquiry result will be known before the Bill reaches the Select Committee. With all the assurances that have been given, I believe that this is a sound scheme, good for Anglesey and the area generally and good for Britain. I hope the Bill will get a Second Reading.

9.38 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke: My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane) said that the Minister of State had told the House that the vital information would be available to the Select Committee. That was not what the Minister said. He said that he very much hoped the information would be available. It is absolutely vital that the report and, if necessary, the conclusions upon it should be available to the Select Committee, because the House of Lords had to operate in a vacuum on the subject. Whatever the statutory or legal processes involved, this matter must be looked at as a whole.
The Bill provides for a terminal, which is what we have been discussing. There has been plenty of reference to what is to happen on shore in Anglesey and there have been references to pipelines. But the whole thing must be looked at together, and it is therefore essential that the Select Committee should have all the information from and conclusions on the inquiry which has taken place. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister of State will agree with me on that.
I want to pay tribute to Shell, which has a very fine record the world over for making certain that its operations do not damage the environment. No undertaking can be more conscious of its responsibilities than is Shell.
I have personal knowledge of the activities of the former chairman of Shell Transport and Trading, a noble Lord who lives quite near to me in Dorset. He has devoted half of his lifetime and all of his fortune to the repair and restoration of one of our greatest and most glorious historic buildings and to the


landscape surrounding it. What did he find to be his greatest difficulty? The local planners who were prepared to put a line of pylons right through the whole thing.
One is apt to be a little suspicious when one finds Shell and the local planners and so many other experts saying that this oil terminal is the best thing. I hope that the Select Committee will have all the information at its fingertips in reaching a decision. It is right that we should give the Bill a Second Reading because there is much that should be considered in detail.
One or two things that have been said tonight are worthy of challenge. The right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) used his undoubted charm to paint a picture showing that all would be well. One hon. Member described himself as an Englishman intervening in the debate with some trepidation. I am an Englishman born in Wales—

Mr. Ogden: Then the hon. Gentleman is a Welshman.

Mr. Cooke: I have an Irish grandmother. I know this part of the world fairly well. Britain's environment belongs to us all and we must be a little wary because we know that local Members will do their best for their constituency and may possibly be influenced by local considerations while we must look at the national point of view.
A great deal has been said about the pipes. It is said that if they are underground everything will be all right. However, even the burying process has an effect on the landscape, often a permanently damaging effect. In addition, the pipes do not exist underground without a certain amount of attention; they need valves and their enclosures, often very ugly, at intervals which themselves generate a certain amount of vehicular traffic and there need to be telephone lines to their hutments. However carefully it is done it all adds up to a bit more pollution of one kind or another. It is not right to say that a pipeline is necessarily the splendid thing that has been suggested.
In Dorset a natural gas pipe was cut across the county and buried. It had all those other things—valves, hideous

enclosures, concrete posts and wire netting, telephone wires going to little huts, and so on. It had to be tested, so millions of gallons of water were pumped out of a river already being savagely attacked by other forms of extraction and we all had to make do without the water we needed. And then, if you please, having got the thing finished, we were told that there was some auxiliary pipe required and it was too expensive to put underground, so now we have to put up with that for a year or two. I hope hon. Members will be warned about the sort of things that happen. If it is underground it is not as simple as all that.
Another issue affecting the West Country which has a bearing on our thinking is the iron-ore jetty which was to be built out from the South Wales coast right across the Bristol Channel to within an ace of Portishead near Bristol. As a dutiful local Member, because the city council and the Port of Bristol were on the side of this scheme I supported it against every personal inclination because I realised that it would damage the environment in no uncertain fashion. We sank our differences and came out in favour of the wretched thing. What happened? It was not parliamentary or local opposition or any of the processes we are going through here which prevented this hideous thing from happening. It was eventually discovered that it was an unnecessary project and that there were other ways of doing it. This did not happen before everyone in the locality, except those like my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) who is very concerned about environmental matters, had come out in favour of the scheme.
I am impressed to some extent that so many people should think that this oil terminal is what we must have. However, there are many lessons to be learned from some of the examples I have cited. I hope that the Select Committee will go into the whole matter with infinite care and that all the information it could possibly need will be at its disposal. If that does not occur, the Bill will receive a poor reception on Third Reading. My hon. Friend the Minister said that he would do his best to see that all possible information would be made available. I hope he will lean over backwards to see that that is done.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: This Measure is of national rather than of parochial interest, as has been indicated by the number of hon. Members on both sides from various parts of the country who have taken part in the debate.
As a Cheshire hon. Member, I have received many representations from people in my constituency about the proposed development. They are, of course, particularly concerned about the problem of pollution that may emanate from it. A lot of what has been said tonight will have allayed some of the doubt that has been expressed. It is clear that when considering a development of this kind, the environmental and amenity factors must be balanced against the economic aspects.
It is undoubtedly true to say that some pollution will be generated by this development, if it takes place. If loading and unloading occurs up a river or estuary, it is possible to place a boom across the water to take care of possible spillage. Out in the open sea, on the other hand, such a boom can have little, if any, point.
The burden of challenging these proposals has in the main fallen on individuals and small associations with limited resources. They certainly do not have the resources of the Shell Company. At no stage to date has an independent body inquired into the economics of these proposals, which will undoubtedly affect a substantial area of outstanding beauty of the United Kingdom.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) spoke of the need for all possible information to be before the Select Committee. There will, as he said, be an opportunity for hon. Members to oppose this development, should they wish to do so, on Third Reading. It is regrettable that the inspector's findings on the land installation proposals have not been before us today. They would have made it a lot easier for us to decide precisely how we feel about the Bill.

9.49 p.m.

Mr. William Edwards: I am grateful to be afforded this oppor-

tunity to wind up the debate. I have a personal interest in this matter in that my home in Anglesey at Amlwch is where the pipeline will pass through if the development takes place.
My home there is a small farm and it is partly threatened by the proposal of the Shell Company and the Anglesey County Council. At first I thought that that was the only threat, but then found that my father's home in Anglesey is likewise threatened by some of the main objectors to the Shell proposal. I understand that a copper mine is to be opened by them at Amlwch.
Amlwch always has been and always will be a small industrial town and it is important not to confuse the effect of this development with, say, the effect of the development of the Wylfa nuclear power station at Cemaes. It is a beautiful coastline, but Amlwch is excluded from the area designated as being of outstanding natural beauty.
At this stage, when we are discussing the Bill in principle, we have to accept that there are various concerns in various parts of the House and of the country about the effect of this development. Of course there is concern about pollution, there is concern about the effect on the environment and concern about the effect on employment in the community.
As for the environment, first of all the House has to consider whether Anglesey County Council is a suitable, responsible body to have the kind of powers with which we are proposing to vest it. I know the authority well. It has been a pioneering authority among Welsh local authorities and I could not think of a more suitable local authority or a more responsible local authority to have these powers vested in it.
Secondly, we have to consider the effect upon the general environment of the community and of the country as a whole. We have to realise that there already exists a planning inquiry which is examining this matter at considerable length and in considerable detail, and we are awaiting the judgment of that inquiry.
If we look at all aspects of the matter we have to balance two features of this development. First, there is the tank


farm. I think it is recognised, and Shell has said this, that it is not possible to build a tank farm without adversely affecting the general environment of the area around. Shell has promised to do everything it possibly can to mitigate the effects, but there will be some detrimental effect upon the environment and everybody accepts this. As a native of Amlwch I would say that there will be considerable advantage to Amlwch in having the development of the small harbour.
Amlwch is divided into two parts, the old community around the harbour and the new development, like an extension of suburban Manchester, which has taken place in Bull Bay. The whole development of the community of Amlwch as a tourist centre and as an attractive small industrial town has been held back by the neglect of the small harbour which is the very heart and the reason for being of the community of Amlwch. That harbour has always been neglected, and it ill became Amlwch District Council to criticise and condemn the scheme, as it did initially, because it was concerned about the future of the harbour. It has had care of the harbour for a very long time but has done very little to develop or look after it. The Bill will give Anglesey County Council the first opportunity to do something about that harbour.
As somebody concerned about making an improvement in the amenities of the community I have sought help from Shell and from the county council to see that the harbour will be improved and will benefit. We have heard from my right hon. Friend that there will be erected a new harbour wall to make the harbour a 24-hour harbour which will afford shelter where none exists at present, and at the very heart of the community, and it will enable Amlwch to have again its reason for being. It will provide a major attraction for that small community, and it will provide a link with industrial development.
The two other pieces of industrial development which have come to this community through Wylfa and Associated Ethyl have detracted from the community and have considerably limited the use of and accessibility to the coastline. This proposal will give Amlwch a

considerable improvement in its environment.

Mr. Hooson: Are the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Cledwyn Hughes) satisfied with the nature of the undertaking that has been given by Shell? The House will need to be assured that they are satisfied by the time that the Bill comes to Third Reading.

Mr. Edwards: I am satisfied completely, because one of the major features of the proposals being put forward by Shell and the county council is the building of a new harbour wall. Without that, the whole venture would fail. So the undertaking is reinforced by the industrial logic and necessity of building this harbour wall. It will be a major improvement which will give Amlwch for the first time in the last 50 years a meaningful little harbour which will enable it to develop the hinterland round it.
The last point concerns oil pollution. Any resident of Amlwch could tell the House and all those who suddenly are concerned about pollution in relation to this proposed development that a real and growing danger exists to the coastline of North Wales at present because of the lightening taking place on ships just beyond the coastline of Amlwch. The amount of lightening going on is increasing day by day, and the number of lightening operations now taking place is very frightening.
I have listened to the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Wyn Roberts) talking about the dangers of pollution. He cannot shirk this issue. Lightening is a danger, and nothing can be done at present to prevent the lightening operations that even the Shell Company undertakes off the coast of Amlwch. As one who is concerned about this real risk to North Wales, I want to see something done and I have sought an undertaking from Shell that, when this pipeline is available, the lightening operations now undertaken outside Amlwch will cease. In my view, that will be a considerable advantage.
There is a second aspect to this pollution point. The Mersey River is probably the biggest potential danger to the oil polluting of our beaches in any part


of the United Kingdom. If there were a collision in the Mersey—and the risk in the Mersey has reached danger point—the whole North Wales coast would be ruined.
On the ground of economic common sense for the country as a whole, on the

ground of the improvement of the environment of Amlwch and on the ground of the reduction of the real danger of oil pollution to the North Wales coast, I commend the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed.

Orders of the Day — MILFORD DOCKS BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second Time.

Mr. Speaker: I am not proposing to call the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan):
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which does not maintain the principle established by Parliament in the case of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Act 1971, in regard to the directors of a company seeking parliamentary power to write down debt, or vary the terms on which money was borrowed, continuing to serve on the Board of that company.
I am, however, prepared to allow the Instruction in the hon. Gentleman's name,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they so amend the Bill that directors of the Company shall resign by a date or dates to be specified in the Bill and shall not be eligible for re-election to the Board except as to be further specified.
to be discussed at the same time as the Motion for the Second Reading.

9.58 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: I am sorry that it will be necessary for me to detain the House for rather longer than I should have wished. In view of the issues raised in the Instruction which has been tabled, it is necessary both to describe the background and past history of the company and to deal with the objections.
The Milford Docks Company was incorporated in 1874 by a Private Act of Parliament. For many years the main trade of the docks was the fishing industry, but there has been a steady decline in fishing from Milford and today the company's principal earnings arise from ship repairing. In spite of the development of Milford Haven as an oil port and the arrival of a number of industrial enterprises to the town, the company is still of key importance to the economic life and job prospects of the area. Together with its subsidiary it employs more than 200 people, but firms for which the facilities of the docks are essential probably provide jobs for at least a

further 500 people, in an area of high unemployment—

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That the proceedings on the Milford Docks Bill, and on the Motion for an Instruction relating to the Bill, set down for consideration at Seven o'clock this evening by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Consideration of Lords Amendments to the Superannuation Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr Clegg.]

Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Edwards: I hope that as the House considers the interests of share and debenture holders or discusses general principles it will not forget that what could be at stake are the jobs of my constituents, the survival of the fishing industry which operates from the docks and the future prosperity of the region.
While the docks themselves are small in relation to the Haven as a whole and the great oil port of Milford, they are the only enclosed docks between Swansea and Merseyside and are frequented by a wide range of craft. The ship repairing business is operating successfully, is providing essential services for local trawler owners and is attracting new custom from further afield. In recent years a good deal has been done to improve the facilities. The main gates have been overhauled at a cost of £34,000 and are now to be mechanised at a cost of a further £30,000—an operation which will produce large revenue savings. Tarmac roads have replaced rail tracks and new plant have been installed. Over £30,000 is being spent on the essential work of bringing the fire-fighting arrangements at the tank farm up to date. Ahead lies the real prospect that oil-drilling operations in the Irish Sea will bring fresh health and activity to the docks.
It is againt this encouraging background, based on undramatic but sensible improvement, that I must take the House back to the events which have led to the promotion of this Bill. In the years up to 1953 the company was reasonably successful and paid regular ordinary dividends. From 1954 to 1965 the company came under the control of directors whose apparent main interest was speculative.


Dividends ceased after 1954 and trading losses were made. A number of ambitious schemes were promoted which did not come to fruition, and several ventures started which ended in disaster.
In 1961 the company obtained a loan of £128,000 from the Board of Trade, with interest at 5 per cent. Bank overdrafts and loans were also obtained to finance the losses and pay interest on the debenture stock which had not been earned. Moreover, the interest on the bank loans was added to the overdraft and produced a snowball effect of debt. It was a sorry story, and it culminated in 1965 when the chairman asked the bank and the Board of Trade to appoint a receiver, which they declined to do for a variety of legal reasons and because there seemed little prospect that anything could be recovered.
Various parties interested in the fate of Milford then took action to prevent the closure which seemed imminent and the disastrous consequences which would have followed from that for the town of Milford. They included my predecessor as Member of Parliament, the borough council and the larger debenture and ordinary stockholders. As a result—and in view of the Instruction we are considering I hope that the House will take due note of what I am about to say—a new board was recruited in 1966 to see whether salvage could be effected. The present chairman undertook the work only if he had the support of all parties, and this was given. He was "approved" by the Board of Trade as required in the loan agreement. The old board resigned in March, 1966, with one exception—a director who was a ship-repairing expert and who was asked to continue because of his technical knowledge and to provide a link with the past. An entirely proper sacrifice had been made. Those responsible for past events have resigned and the new board began the task of recovery. Losses were stopped in the second half of 1966 and profits were made in 1967.
The operation took a little time. Indeed, nobody had expected anything else. The new board, fighting for the existence of the company, was forced to continue the default of the old company for about 18 months, but in 1967 debenture interest payments were resumed and they have

been maintained ever since. In the same year an agreement was made with the bank for the orderly reduction of the overdraft on favourable terms. As a result it has declined from a peak of £460,000 to £120,000 at present. This has been achieved in spite of the expenditure during the same five years of £100,000 on the repairs and improvements to which I have referred.
In 1971 the Department of Trade and Industry, which had taken over the activities of the old Board of Trade, agreed to reduce the interest on its loan which, like the debenture interest, had been fully paid by the summer of 1967. It agreed to reduce this interest from 5 to 3½ per cent., to waive interest on arrears and to postpone redemption until such time as the bank loan was paid off, or by 1975 at the latest. This agreement did not prevent the payment of arrears but it provided that if those arrears were paid the Department should be paid as well.
That brings me to the reasons for the promotion of the Bill. I have explained to the House how the debenture stock interest got into arrear between 1965 and 1967. The arrears amount to about £38,000. Any payment of them with the consent of the Department of Trade and Industry would involve a proportionate payment of the Department's arrears as well. I quote from the circular to debenture holders dated 11th November, 1971:
Technically it would be possible at any time for legal action to be taken to recover the arrears since, though debenture stockholders have shown voluntary co-operation there is no agreement binding them. Such action would effectively nullify the benefit of the concessions which the company and stockholders now have and inhibit further progress towards financial and commercial rehabilitation. The directors are advised that no machinery is at present available by which debenture stockholders as a body could assent to a scheme for dealing with the arrears on a defined basis.
They consider therefore that it would be in the best interests of all stockholders to promote a Bill in the forthcoming Session of Parliament with the following objects. First, to impose a moratorium prohibiting any proceedings for recovery of the outstanding arrears until 30th June, 1975. Secondly, to give the company the option as an alternative to paying off the arrears of raising the rate of interest on debenture stock from 3½ to 4½ per cent. per annum and cancelling the arrears.


At present the whole future of the company and the interests of all—the D.T.I., bankers, shareholders, debenture holders, employees, not to speak of the economic life of the neighbourhood—could be put at peril by the action of one debenture holder, even if he had acquired his stock after the original default. Such a situation would be intolerable, and the prime object of this Bill is to remove this possibility.
There is no other machinery by which debenture holders can bind themselves to show forbearance, though they have done so to date. As the stock is a quoted security, ownership keeps changing. Anyone could buy stock and sue for arrears of interest accrued years before. I am sure the House will agree that the right time to deal with arrears is not a matter that can or should be left to the whim of an individual speculator.
The main objects of the Bill are twofold: first, to stay any legal proceedings for recovery until 30th June, 1975, the date when the arrangements with the bank and the D.T.I. come to an end; and, secondly, to give the company the option, instead of paying off the arrears in cash before that date, to raise the rate of interest.
The advantage of this second proposal is that it does not add to the total indebtedness of the company, but causes the market value of the stock to rise—indeed, I understand that it has already done so in anticipation—thus affording a way in which holders can get their money back in advance.
I now turn to the Clauses of the Bill. Clauses 1 and 2 are formal.
Clause 3 imposes a moratorium only on the arrears of interest on the debenture stock, but not, I emphasise, on the current interest, from the time that stockholders were notified of the intended Bill until 30th June, 1975, when the arrangements with the bank and the D.T.I. finally expire. I emphasise that this arrangement does not subordinate the debenture holders' interests or those of the D.T.I. The debenture shares and the D.T.I. loan rank pari passu.
Clause 4 provides that at any time before that the company may either pay up the arrears in full, or alternatively, increase the contractual rate on the debenture stock from 3½ to 4½ per cent. and cancel the outstanding arrears. This is

equivalent to giving holders by way of compensation interest in perpetuity of 13·2 per cent. on the amount of the arrears outstanding. The intention is to define in advance the compensation which may be expected so that holders know where they stand.
Clause 5 prevents the payment of ordinary dividends while arrears are outstanding and formalises the situation which has existed in practice since 1954.
The remaining Clauses are not directly concerned with arrears. Clause 6 provides for class meetings to be held in future if any question should arise requiring the assent of debenture holders. Machinery for this is now lacking. A 75 per cent. majority stipulation is that recognised by the Companies Acts for such situations in limited companies.
Clause 7 allows the company to purchase and cancel debenture stock if it has surplus funds and any holder is willing to sell. This power is not to be exercised until arrears are dealt with. It is intended that the stock be bought in the market or by tender open to all holders.
Clause 8 allows the company to borrow on the security of some specific asset which may be acquired in future. It does not, I emphasise, allow the company to pledge anything now available to debenture stockholders. Having regard to the record, it clearly might be difficult to raise money for some project except on the security of the asset to be acquired. This power is possessed by other authorities.
Clause 9 reduces the new capital which the company can raise from £13 million to £1 million. The higher figure related to projects for which powers were taken in earlier Acts which have now lapsed. In the end it makes a virtue out of a necessity.
Clause 10 is unrelated to financial matters. It deals with the problem of parking vehicles within the docks, which vexes all dock authorities. Roadways in the docks are not public, but are much used. Experience elsewhere shows that it is impossible to enforce parking regulations effectively without the ultimate sanction of removal. Other authorities have been given this power.
Clause 11 is formal. Clause 12 repeals a large number of obsolete provisions,


mainly relating to the abortive scheme sanctioned in 1957, but never carried out, and to charging powers which are now the subject of general legislation in the Harbours Acts.
I must now say something about the Instruction in the names of some hon. Members. The Instruction refers to the principles established in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Act of 1971. My hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body), who was Chairman of the Select Committee, described that principle very succinctly at the consideration stage, when he said:
our desire to amend the Bill to prevent persons coming on to the Board in future who have in the past failed in their financial obligations.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan), speaking on the same topic, said:
When a Bill is brought before Parliament to write down debts, or to relieve a corporation of debts which it owes, then Parliament has to consider whether this is something which it can swallow easily, whether it is something which it can allow to be made an easy precedent, or whether it must make that road difficult to travel."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st June, 1971; Vol. 819, cc. 1095–1118.]
There, from the horse's mouth so to speak or, if my hon. Friends will forgive me for saying so, from the mouths of two of the horses, is the principle which is the subject of this Amendment—persons
who have in the past failed in their financial obligations
or, again,
When a Bill is brought before Parliament to write down debts, or to relieve a corporation of debts which it owes …
One thing is clear about this case, or so it seems to me, and that is that those who have in the past failed in their financial obligations "—that is to say the old board—did resign and were replaced as long ago as 1966, when the new board began its thankless task of rescue and recovery. Thankless the members of the board no doubt expected it to be, but can they ever have imagined that after seven years of hard work and steady progress they would be cast by Parliament in the rôle of sacrificial victims in the name of "principle"? I cannot believe that this House could be so unjust, or could approve a principle so unreasonable. But the principle was very specific. It involved the writing down of debt and the relief of debts owed by a corporation.
The definition of ineligible persons in the Mersey Act is even narrower—
a director of any body corporate in respect of whose income or assets a receiver was appointed or which was wound up.
The provision refers specifically to those in office when the receiver is appointed or the winding up commenced, and not to those who accepted office later.
No receiver was appointed to the Milford Docks Company, nor was it wound up. There has been no writing down of debt. As to the relief of debts, I am advised that in the legal sense there is no relief of debts unless the option is exercised, and in that case the relief is given in return for consideration. No doubt the Committee can examine the adequacy of that consideration.
It is true that the new board in the first desperate 18 months when it was fighting for the company's very existence, was forced to continue to default and had to postpone the repayment of the obligations incurred by the actions of its predecessors. In the Instruction the movers have had to come some way from the Mersey definitions, and now, apparently, directors are to be sacked if they vary the terms, even if the variation is fair and generally accepted.
I ask the House to accept this, if it accepts no more, that it would be unreasonable to refuse a Second Reading to a Bill in circumstances where there is some reason at least to doubt that any principle as it was then defined by Parliament has been breached. If breach there has been, it is of a kind quite impossible to examine adequately in a Second Reading debate. It is a matter much better left to the Select Committee.
For the same reasons, it seems wrong that the House should approve an Instruction that the Bill be amended to obtain the resignation of the directors of the new board in circumstances which might be widely misunderstood, particularly when their eligibility for re-election is left totally unspecified and undetermined.
To insist on the resignation of these men in that way while they are still engaged in their work of salvage would be a grave injustice, and in my view would be gravely detrimental to the company, to its ordinary shareholders, to the stockholders and to my constituents who rely on it for employment. Hon.


Members may rightly see this as the vindication of a principle. Others will undoubtedly see it as a condemnation by Parliament of the actions of the present board, a condemnation which would shake confidence in the company and seriously threaten its progress to recovery.
But, having said that, the company and the promoters entirely recognise and acknowledge the importance of the principle and are anxious to meet the objections in a reasonable way. They feel —I am sure that the House would agree —that the manner in which the principle should be met is much better worked out in detail by the Committee.
I have had the opportunity to discuss the matter with a number of movers of the Instruction and I hope that what I am now going to say will not only enable them not to press the Instruction, but may satisfy the House.
The company undertakes to bring to the attention of the Select Committee considering the Bill the principle established by the Mersey Docks Act, 1971, so that the Committee can give special consideration to the appointment or reappointment of the directors of the company who held office on or before 28th February, 1966, with a view, if the Committee think fit, to imposing such conditions as are appropriate in the circumstances. It also undertakes to submit proposals to the Select Committee to ensure that directors appointed after 28th February, 1966, shall not continue in office unless approved by a meeting of debenture holders.
I hope that the House will agree that, in this way, the matter is adequately drawn to the attention of the Select Committee and that it is the proper body to work out a solution which will in any case be subject to the approval of the House at Report stage and on Third Reading.
I will not pretend that it has been easy for the company or the promoters to provide an undertaking that seems just and fair to them and acceptable to the future working of the company and yet satisfies the objections of those concerned with this principle. I hope that they have been successful in this. In these circumstances, I believe that the Bill deserves the support of the House without further Instruction.

10.23 p.m.

Mr. Martin Maddan: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) on having so succinctly outlined the circumstances which have led to the Bill being brought forward and also what the Bill proposes to do. I should also congratulate the promoters of the Bill who authorised him to make that statement. That undertaking fully satisfies me and, I think, my hon. Friends. In the circumstances, for my part, I do not intend to press the Instruction.
All four of us who signed the Instruction were members of the Select Committee which considered the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill in the last Session. Mr. Speaker has said that he does not intend to call the Motion in my name, which I put on the Order Paper by way of explaining what was in our mind in putting down the Instruction. I draw the attention of the House to its terms:
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which does not maintain the principle established by Parliament in the case of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Act 1971 in regard to the directors of a company seeking parliamentary power to write down debt, or vary the terms on which money was borrowed, continuing to serve on the Board of that company.
That was the origin of our interest. But I emphasise that the case of Milford is in no way comparable in magnitude to the case of Mersey; it is certainly not a disaster story now, in 1972. But there is one similarity and one danger in the Milford Bill which Parliament was anxious, when it accepted the Select Committee's special report on Mersey, should never be repeated. The similarity is that the Milford Bill is concerned with writing down debt or varying terms on which money was borrowed. I must concede to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke that I used the words "varying terms" and not "varying terms adversely", following the wording of Standing Orders governing what has to be done by companies when promoting Private Bills, because it would be a lawyer's bean feast to describe what was adverse and what was not adverse. That was the only reason why I have omitted the word at various times. That is the similarity: writing down debt or varying its terms.
The danger is that a stream of statutory companies, not just harbour companies,


may come to Parliament to do exactly that.
The special report of the Select Committee on the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill contained the paragraph:
Your Committee are concerned that a private Bill should raise such a matter as the remission of debt by Act of Parliament. Having listened with great care to the detailed evidence they have found, on a division, that the Preamble is proved, having regard to the circumstances, which they do not believe could ever be repeated in exactly the same way. In view of this, this Bill should not be regarded as a precedent.
The Committee also said:
Your Committee have radically amended the Bill. Their main amendments have the following effect.
The report lists six effects, and then the seventh:
exclusion from the Board of persons who have been directors of bodies who have failed to fulfil their financial obligations, unless the Secretary of State so consents.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke was kind enough to refer to what I said on consideration of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill on 21st June last year. He correctly quoted me as saying that Parliament must make the road of promoting such Bills difficult to travel. In the next sentence, I added:
One of the strong reasons for the Amendment about directors was to make clear the distaste felt by the Committee, because there was no alternative owing to the situation which had arisen, in having to deal with the Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st June, 1971; Vol. 819, c. 1096.]
It was made very clear by Parliament what was in its mind. I have looked at precedents and, as far as I can find in living memory of those in the House today, there is only one precedent for the Bill, and that is the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill of the last Session. In 1937 a Bill was brought forward by the Whitehaven Harbour Authority, but that was only to give statutory effect to arrangements that had been made and agreed by all concerned, and it is in no way a precedent.
We feared that what we did in 1971 with Mersey would create a precedent, and we now see that our fears were well grounded.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: The record should be set straight. The preparation of the Bill and the plan which has led to it was under consideration by the

company and the proceedings were being prepared before the Mersey Bill came before Parliament.

Mr. Maddan: I accept that at once, but Parliament having had a clear run on this sort of thing, then had to deal with such a matter in 1971, and is dealing with it again in 1972. I and my hon. Friends, who have put their names to this Instruction, have been what may be considered obstinate because we think that unless Parliament digs in its heels and requires actions of the sort that my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke handsomely undertook would be done, there will be a succession of such Bills from all sorts of statutory companies.
I turn briefly to the Bill. The Milford company is not faced with the disastrous situation that faced the Mersey company. Because of that it may be that the Bill is seeking a parliamentary sledgehammer to crack a little nut of £38,000 or 26 months of arrears of interest which were incurred in 1965–66–67. That is all the more reason why Parliament must insist on pause for thought before such Bills are promoted. Would not Clause 6, setting up means by which debenture holders could reach decisions, be enough and let the scheme in the Bill be put to them? If they had assented, might not that have been adequate? There might have been objections from the up to 25 per cent. minority, but from Parliament's point of view the situation might have been much more acceptable.
As it is, the Milford Bill takes away the rights of 10 per cent. of the debenture holders or those having together £10,000 of stock, to appoint a receiver and proceed in law to claim the debt due to them; it is clear that no debenture holders have exercised this right since 1965 when the arrears arose, nor are any of them exercising it now which they would be perfectly entitled to do were they so minded. The Bill gives the company the option to increase the debenture interest rate in compensation for the moratorium and the arrears but it gives no guarantee that it will exercise its option, and so debenture holders are asked to accept the moratorium with no guarantee that anything will be done to better their position. The Bill gives the company the right to purchase back debenture stock selectively from those it chooses; I should have thought it would


have been the practice more in keeping with the City code that they should have purchased in the market or by tender. So there are some things in the Bill which in my opinion adversely affect the debenture holders.
There is a further matter which Parliament must consider which is a matter of general policy with regard to the ports, and that is that a spate of such Bills as this will adversely affect City confidence in harbour companies and perhaps statutory companies in general. People will be unwilling to put up money to companies if they think at any moment the company can go to Parliament and, at the drop of a hat, Parliament will change the terms on which money was lent.
In the Mersey Bill the old directors were disqualified unless the Secretary of State approved of them. I want to say why it was not possible and apposite to have such a formula in this case. The Secretary of State was intimately involved by negotiations in the affairs of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. A new company was being formed, and he was in a position to know about the personalities involved. But that cannot be the case, and it would perhaps be undesirable if it were to be the case, in every statutory company. That is why that formula could not be used exactly on this occasion. But the undertaking my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke has given fully satisfies the principle we had in mind in the last Session.
I understand that all except one of the present directors of the Milford Docks Company were not concerned with the period when the company went downhill. My hon. Friend gave the reason for that director's remaining. But the Bill may remove a spur to the Board to do everything possible as soon as possible to honour the debenture debt, and may disadvantage debenture holders. If directors of a company find themselves forced to go to Parliament to get it to alter the rules under which the company has contracted debt, directors who have been chosen by people other than those who lent the money to the company, then propriety demands that those directors should offer their resignation to a suitably constituted group or groups at a convenient time after the Bill becomes an Act. The principle I have outlined

has been fully acknowledged in what my hon. Friend said.
It is significant that the Government, who have a position to protect, like the debenture holders, have control over who shall be chairman. It is not at all wrong that the debenture holders should also have a say now in who continues on the board.
Perhaps this debate and the decision we are taking will be a warning to directors of statutory companies, and to Government Departments, that Parliament will not readily rubber-stamp private Bills to write down debt or vary the terms on which a company has borrowed money. So tonight is an important occasion, and that is why other hon. Members and I put down the Instruction on the Order Paper.

10.38 p.m.

Mr. Michael English: The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) is doing his job as a constituency Member, and has done it very ably. I agree with the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) that the assurances the hon. Gentleman has given will enable us not to press the Instruction to a Division.
But I cannot refrain from pointing out that the third paragraph on page 2 of the Bill says:
… in the period between 1965 and 1967 the interest on the debenture stock could not be paid in full…".
Those dates are significant. I find it just a little more than a coincidence that after a Labour Government was elected in 1964, and obtained an increased majority in 1966, and was proposing to nationalise the docks, so many docks and harbour boards seem to have got themselves into a reduced position, and in particular that two of them, the Mersey Docks to a far greater extent than the Milford Docks, were making a loss at just about that significant period.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: If the hon. Gentleman had looked at the history of the company, he would have seen that the loss had been continuing for a long time, that a number of wildly unlikely projects had been put forward by the then board, which culminated in 1965 in a proposal to develop an iron ore terminal at Milford. It was the collapse of that project that brought matters to a head. Although I


should not have been surprised if it had been the arrival of a Labour Government that brought the company to its knees, I do not think that was so on this occasion.

Mr. English: The hon. Gentleman should look at the history of the Mersey docks, which also started making reduced profits, or losses, and only made a really vast loss after the company thought it was going to be nationalised. I notice that the Milford Docks company managed to pay interest on its debenture stock until after a Government came into power with a proposal to nationalise the docks as part of their policy. It may be pure coincidence. I sincerely hope it is. But one thing the hon. Gentleman cannot say is that it is not a coincidence that this Bill is before us, since the Mersey Docks and Harbour Act came before us because of two things: first, the election of 1970, after which it was unlikely that any docks would be nationalised, and, secondly, the then policy of the new Government, which was, as the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry put it, not to rescue "lame ducks".
This Bill, strangely enough, has not come before us until now. The two Conservative members of the Mersey Docks and Harbours Bill Private Bill Committee are here with us. I think that if the Mersey Docks and Harbour Act had come before Parliament after the collapse of Rolls-Royce, it is possible that a totally different attitude would have been taken towards it. If this Bill had come first, with only £38,000 involved, I think a different attitude might have been taken. The promoters followed the precedent of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Act, not exactly but in so far as it was convenient. I accept that they have realised their error, and I will not comment further about that.
But I must refer to the strange way in which the Department of Trade and Industry creeps into the Bill. There is not the slightest doubt that the Department is thoroughly protected under the agreement and the Bill. Incidentally, I do not know quite why it should be the Department of Trade and Industry rather than the Department of the Environment, which was concerned with the Mersey docks legislation.
The Department of Trade and Industry is, of course, headed by the very man

who made the famous remark about lame ducks. One may or may not have a policy of protecting lame ducks—after Rolls-Royce that policy looks a bit thin —but a policy which says, "We are not protecting lame ducks such as debenture holders or shareholders"—and in the Mersey case some were literally widows and orphans and many were retired people—"but we are protecting ourselves" is, I cannot refrain from pointing out, not merely illogical but immoral.
I hope the Under-Secretary of State will attempt to defend the position that appears to exist. It would appear that his Department is supporting the Bill. It is certainly clear that the Department's money is well protected. I do not object to that. I do not object to the taxpayers' money being protected in this way. But I rather feel that the Department or even the taxpayers as a whole are more able to bear a loss than are some of the individuals who must be shareholders or debenture holders in this case. Although I hope that the hon. Gentleman will try to defend that position, I think he will find it a little difficult.

10.44 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): I am certainly not going to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) and reincarnate all the debates about the Mersey docks or any other of the major issues which have come before the Government in this last year. But I should explain to him and the House clearly the interest of the Department of Trade and Industry in this matter. The reason is simple, as my hon. hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) has made clear —we are creditors of this company. Whether or not the hon. Member for Nottingham, West likes it, I would have regarded it as a moral duty of the Government and my Department in particular to take care of the taxpayers' money. I do not appear before the hon. Gentleman in a white sheet on that score.
The background is that in 1960 this company finding itself in some financial difficulties secured a loan of £128,000 to be repayable over 10 years. Subsequently because of difficulties it experienced no capital was repaid and very little interest. At the same time the bank and other debenture holders became involved in


supporting the company. In 1968 the bank agreed to write off half its debt subject to other considerations and in 1970, to help the company, the then Board of Trade entered into a five year moratorium, providing that the arrangement with the bank continued until 1975, on condition that the interest arrears were not paid to debenture holders without Government consent. That was the agreement entered into and finalised last year by my Department. I should stress in view of what were rather unfair strictures by the hon. Gentleman that the Government did not by that agreement require any statutory changes in the right of the debenture holders.
The Government could not make an agreement with the debenture holders; that was a matter for the company itself to make. It should be emphasised that the Government's purpose was not and could not be to alter the rights of the debenture holders. Their object was merely to help the company in servicing the loans with which it found itself burdened.

Mr. English: Could the hon. Gentleman give us the date in 1970 when the original agreement was entered into? He said it was by the Board of Trade so one presumes that it was before the middle of 1970. If so, would his Department have entered into that agreement under the policy it adopted in the latter half of 1970? Further, does he not agree that the Mersey Bill was also submitted by the company and there were many arguments saying that it was a public Bill disguised as a private Bill? It was said that it was promoted as a result of the actions of the Department of the Environment.

Mr. Grant: I cannot find the exact date but the arrangement was made entirely on merits of the case. It is wrong to draw analogies with the Mersey Bill. I can now advise the lion. Gentleman of the date when the agreement was finalised—May, 1971. I can also tell him that the decision was made on the merits of the arrangement, with the Government safeguarding the taxpayer in an ordinary commercial way and it was the concern of my Department.
It is not right to say that the Government are supporting the Bill but we are not actively opposing it. There are certain features which appear to be question-

able. For example Clause 3 prevents holders of the debenture stock from recovering their arrears of interest during the moratorium period.
Clause 4 provides for the cancellation of arrears of interest if the company increases the rate of interest on existing debenture stock. Clause 6 provides that the rights attaching to any issue of debenture stock may be varied with the consent of three-quarters of the holders of such stock. Although there may be circumstances in which the extinction of the right of debenture holders is warranted, the objections of the petitioners show that there is substantial opposition to such a step in this case. Therefore, I hope that, during the Committee stage, the objections of the petitioners will be examined carefully and sympathetically.
There is one other point to which I should refer as it has been the nub of discussion between my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan), the hon. Member for Nottingham, West, and my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke. It concerns the Instruction. I am very pleased that a sensible compromise seems to have been reached between hon. Members, and obviously what has been said tonight in this light will be considered carefully by the Committee. I make only one broad observation which I hope will be considered by the Committee.
In considering what should be done in accordance with the Instruction, the Committee should consider first the danger of individuals being penalised without the opportunity of being heard. It should consider carefully whether provisions are likely to operate unfairly; for example, a director who is brought in to help in a crisis and who is still serving at the time specified might be caught by the Instruction, whereas one who happens to have resigned before that time would not be. The first may well have no responsibility for the failure, whereas the second may have a great deal. Any too stringent a provision in this respect does not ensure that the culpable persons are excluded from office.

Mr. Maddan: Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that the undertaking given by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) itself eliminates the danger that he feared would come from our Instruction?

Mr. Grant: Yes, I think that that is right. I am glad that that accommodation was reached. I was making a broad observation on the matter.
There was one other point which concerned the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove has made this clear in not drawing too many analogies with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board case. It is the Government's view that any requirement that the Secretary of State should rule on an individual being accepted as a director is invidious, since it involves the Secretary of State giving judgment on matters outside his knowledge. I was glad to hear what my hon. Friend had to say about that.
Having explained the Government's position in not opposing the Second Reading, I think that we may now leave the matter to be considered by the Committee, and I have no doubt that it will do so extremely carefully.

10.54 p.m.

Mr. Richard Body: I wish to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) and to thank him for sparing me the task of having to make a speech in support of this Instruction. I am glad that my hon. Friend recognises the existence of this principle and, like all of us who served on the Select Committee, I regard my hon. Friend's undertaking as completely satisfactory.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and referred to the Examiners.

Mr. Maddan: In view of the undertaking given by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke in the debate, I do not propose to move the Instruction.

Orders of the Day — REDUNDANT MINEWORKERS

10.55 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): I beg to move,
That the Redundant Mineworkers (Payments Scheme) Order 1972, a draft of which was laid before this House on 1st February, be approved.
This is a scheme to provide pensions to redundant miners and this order proposes to continue it for a further two years. The scheme was started in 1968 as a result of the Coal Industry Act, 1967. I shall introduce the order briefly and will ask the leave of the House to reply to any points which are made.
The House realises the special problems facing older miners since it has always in the past supported redundant mineworkers schemes. Many of these miners have suffered physical hardship and damage through their dangerous work in the past and find it hard to obtain new jobs. This applies particularly to those older workers who are made redundant, especially if they live in some of the mining areas which are remote from other centres of industrial development. It is necessary to replace the present scheme because it expires on 25th March, 1972. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry said during the passage of the Coal Industry Act, 1971, it has been our intention to bring in a new and improved scheme, and this is the scheme.
We have carried out extensive consultations with the National Union of Mineworkers who submitted a memorandum on the scheme. We have had two meetings with that union which were attended either by my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry or myself, there have also been meetings with officials. The National Association of Colliery Over-men, Deputies and Shotfirers have been asked to make representations and the National Coal Board has been consulted as to the nature of the new scheme.
We have succeeded in improving the old scheme in a number of respects to meet various representations but we have decided not to change the main principle of the scheme. It will be available for three years to any miner who is made redundant after he has reached 55 to help him to adjust to the new situation and to


the difficulties which confront him. We have not conceded that it should be a premature retirement pension. We are not able to agree it should continue, whatever the period out of work, to the age of 65. To do so would have more than doubled the cost of the scheme and would have made it not a scheme enabling the redundant miner to retrain and readjust to altered circumstances, but would have made it a premature retirement pension.
Moreover, we have not felt it possible to reduce the starting age to 55 because I do not think it right this should be made available to younger men who can the more easily find new work. It would have added considerably to the expense of the scheme to have made that concession. Otherwise I think it can be said that we have met most of the points raised by the N.U.M.
In particular I draw attention to two major changes embodied in the scheme. The first is the addition of cost of living increments. Part of the pension is paid through the unemployment benefit and that is to be adjusted annually. The other part is the basic scheme benefit. It is intended to adjust basic benefit by adding to it an increment based on the rise in the cost of living in the year just past. This is a concession which I hope will be welcomed, because it has been generally held that the increase in the cost of living has destroyed a lot of the value of this pension, and this should help to put that right.
It is generally the Government's policy to review all benefits of this sort every year, and this concession brings it into line with general practice. The second major concession is that we have increased from £3 to £6 a week the benefit which can be kept if a redundant mineworker finds a new job and enters new employment, because if he did he would probably incur income tax, perhaps National Insurance contributions, travelling expenses and other expenses which might well have exceeded the £3 which he would have been able to draw if he had continued to draw that from the redundant mineworkers payment scheme.
The increase to £6 gives him a clear incentive to find new work because he will still be able to get a proportion of his benefit.
The other minor points which have been met I will list, but there is one which we have not decided to agree to, and that is the suggestion from the National Union of Mineworkers that we should treat married men in the same way as we treat single men. There are several reasons why this is right. This is a State benefit which comes from the scheme and it would be wrong to extend the same level of benefit both to married and single men because we take into account the expenses, of the married man, and indeed, all State benefits take that into account. To have made an exception in this case would have breached that principle.
Moreover, although the married man is at the present time receiving roughly 90 per cent. of his previous earnings, to have changed to a position where the single man received the same amount would probably have had the effect of bringing down the percentage which the married man received. This would have increased the global total, and would have been far from popular with those married redundant mineworkers who would have suffered. I believe it is right to keep the principle that there is a difference in State benefits for those who are married and those who are single.
We have made concessions on an important point which the N.U.M. raised, which is that days spent in the last year of earnings on trade union duties or social work, or occasional sickness or other unavoidable absences from work should not be deducted from the computation of the last year's pay. This will be met by administrative action, and therefore it does not appear in the order; but it is none the less the intention of the National Coal Board to make that effective from now on.
Secondly, we have made the rent allowance which is payable to a redundant mineworkers transferable to a new house if he were to move his home. Hitherto, he received a rent allowance if he remained in the house from which he was working before he was made redundant, but if he moved home he was disallowed the rent allowance whatever the rent might have been in his new home. That will no longer apply.
Thirdly, we have eased the rules regarding the offsetting of State and other 

coal industry benefits against the total of the mineworkers' redundancy payment benefit. Fourthly, we have changed the scheme so that in the event of a second redundancy—if a miner is made redundant a second time—his earnings are computed on the wages paid in the year immediately before the second redundancy as opposed to his previous level of earnings.
Fifthly, these last three concessions will apply to men who are in the existing scheme, not only to miners who might be made redundant in future, but to all those who are part of the existing scheme at the present time.
The Government believe that this is a generous scheme which meets as many as possible of the points which were put forward in extensive consultations. It is by far the most generous scheme in existence for any industry or trade in this country. Moreover, it is more favourable and generous than the scheme in effect in the European Economic Community for redundant mineworkers there.
I commend the scheme to the House as the best agreement that can be made. I hope that it will be taken as a generous and helpful contribution to the very real problems which people who have spent their working lives in the coal mines and have been made redundant towards the end of their working lives undoubtedly suffer.

11.6 p.m.

Mr. Alex Eadie: The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry referred, in his opening remarks, to the fact that there would be difficulties in finding alternative employment in mining areas. I will come to that later.
The hon. Gentleman was right in saying that the scheme has the agreement of the National Union of Mineworkers and that there has been consultation. However, he told us that he was unable to meet the N.U.M.'s points relating to premature retirement and extending the scheme until the age of 65. To some extent there is a contradiction between the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks and this statement. I should like to try to make the case later.
Looking at the order we discover that it has the same basic structure as the 1968 scheme in the sense that there are

12 Articles and 14 appendices. The Under-Secretary outlined some of the changes in the 1972 draft order compared with the 1968 order. We would draw particular attention to 13 which show a difference in the over-55 scheme compared with the 1968 order.
The hon. Gentleman referred, for example, to the fact that the annual cost of living increase will he paid to beneficiaries on a personal basis after they have been receiving benefit for one year and then again after two years. We certainly welcome that.
Secondly, that the general increases in benefits, such as the special hardship allowance and workmen's compensation supplementation will not be offset as at present will be greatly welcomed.
Thirdly, there are the increases in benefits paid to men on workmen's compensation as a result of becoming total or major incapacity cases.
Fourth, there is award of special hardship allowance in respect of an accident or disease sustained after redundancies.
Fifth, any general increase in unemployment benefit between 6th April, 1972, and 6th April, 1973, will be offset against the benefit of men made redundant after 6th April, 1973. The hon. Gentleman commented on that.
Sixth, the maximum amount of benefit that can be kept by those who get a job is increased from £3 to £6 a week. That is generally welcomed.
Seventh, the table of basic benefit appropriate to the various ranges of pre-redundancy earnings set out in Appendix 4 has been recalculated so that the basic benefit, plus the 1971 rate of unemployment benefit for a man and one adult dependant, equals, after tax and on average over the three years, 90 per cent. of previous take-home pay. Since the table in the old scheme was based on the lower 1967 rate of unemployment benefit the figures for the basic benefit in the new scheme are lower.
Eighth, service in the coal industry before nationalisation can now count towards the 10 qualifying years.
Ninth, the other substantial change is that women who are not paying the full National Insurance stamp will be able to get some benefit despite not being eligible for unemployment benefit.
Tenth, days of absence from home which disqualify a person from unemployment benefit, and also from scheme benefit, will be counted as days rather than one day in a week resulting in a whole week's disqualification as at present.
The Under-Secretary commented on the question of penalties. If I may digress on this, the Opposition certainly welcome the interpretation that penalties, for example concerning councillors, should be now removed. We have always thought it was an absurd anomaly that people who sought to serve the community, and indeed some of them gave 20 or 25 years of their lives for the benefit of the community, should be penalised when confronted with redundancy.
Eleventh, a man made redundant within the terms of the scheme and reemployed in the coal industry for more than a year and then made redundant a second time can choose on which of the two pre-redundancy earnings he wishes his benefit to be calculated.
Twelfth, the requirement that in order to continue getting the rent allowance a person must continue to live in the same house in which he was living when he was made redundant, and that this house must continue to be owned by the board, is removed.
Thirteenth, the relevant tax year on which pre-redundancy earnings are based will now be the previous tax year for everybody, instead of being two years ago for those made redundant during April. This again is a concession we certainly welcome.
The Under-Secretary made some comment on the amendments which would be made and incorporated in the 1968 scheme under which men are at present beneficiaries. We should like more of these to be incorporated in the 1968 scheme, but it is right and proper that the House should have drawn to its attention the factors that will benefit men who are at present in the 1968 scheme. Then there are the offset provisions, the removal of the restriction for continuing receipt of the rent allowance, the removal of the ban on women who did not pay the full National Insurance stamp, the counting of absence from home in days instead of weeks and the choice which is given to men who are made redundant for the second time will be incorporated

into the 1968 scheme. These changes will apply only to beneficiaries under the 1968 scheme who experience the listed change of circumstances: for example, a general increase in the special hardship allowance, a second redundancy and compulsory purchase of the board's house in which men live after 25th March.
We are entitled at this juncture to draw attention to the discussions that took place. I understand that an understanding rather than an agreement was reached as a result of which the Department of Trade and Industry indicated that it would consider paying something on an ex gratia basis for people who experience such changed circumstances before this date.
When the Under-Secretary replies he might like to make some comment about this. It is of great moment and importance to many miners at the present time. It can be based on the introduction that the hon. Gentleman made when he was presenting the order to the House about the difficulties that men experience in mining areas in finding any kind of employment.

The Minister for Industry (Sir John Eden): I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman but I am not absolutely clear about the particular change of circumstances which he was drawing to our attention. I wonder whether he would be good enough to recapitulate.

Mr. Eadie: The fault may be entirely mine. I was quoting from a document from the National Union of Mineworkers. The idea is not one from my own head. The document, which I have before me, goes on to say that these changes will apply only to beneficiaries under the 1968 scheme who experience the listed changes of circumstances, and I read out those changes. They are, for example, a general increase in special hardship allowance, a second redundancy and compulsory purchase of the board's houses in which they live after 25th March. We are really talking about dates.
The point is made that the Department of Trade and Industry has indicated that it will consider doing something on an ex gratia basis for people who experience such change of circumstances before that date. I was asking the Under-Secretary, since this is of great importance to people at present on the scheme, whether he


would care to comment, because this debate will be read carefully by many men who have a vested interest in the outcome of any amendment of the 1968 scheme irrespective of the order proposing the new scheme in 1972.
The Under-Secretary mentioned that the new scheme had the support of the N.U.M. I do not remember whether he conceded, but I think it is the fact, that most of the improvements in the scheme that I have tried to list were proposed in the first place by the N.U.M. The Minister in replying to the debate can perhaps tell us that the Government had to concede the improvements or the suggestions put forward by the N.U.M.
It is not churlish of me to mention the criticisms that were made by the N.U.M., which argued that the three-year limit on the duration of benefit should be removed. The hon. Gentleman commented on this when he said he was not able to concede that the premature retirement provision should extend until the age of 65. That is the point I am trying to make. The N.U.M.—I am a member of its national executive—argued this on the basis that most of the men who had been receiving benefit, as the hon. Gentleman conceded in his opening remarks, were still unemployed at the end of the third year, and this was particularly the case with those living in areas of high unemployment. This meant that after three years their income dropped from 90 per cent. of their previous take-home pay to the poverty line up to which supplementary allowance brought them.
That is not an assertion but is a fact which is supported, as the following figures indicate. The figures for those still benefiting under the scheme—that is, excluding those whose three years are up—speak for themselves. They show that (a) the number of men in the scheme is 12,330 and (b) the number of men under the age of 60 when they were made redundant was 4,671; (c) the number of those in this category (b) who have found a job is the astonishing figure of 492; (d) the number of men who were 60 and overwhen they became redundant is 7,659 and (e) of those 7,659 the staggering figure of 84 have found a job. (c) is 10·5 per cent. of (b) and (e) is 1·1 per cent of (d). I wonder whether the Minister would like to comment on this

because, as I suggested to him, the N.U.M. was not making an assertion but was quoting the facts of the situation, which the Government may wish to consider further.
Before I knew that I was to speak in this debate—it was thrust upon me today—I received a letter from a constituent today describing the plight of his miner father. One could not read it without feeling anger as well as sorrow and pity. His father was made redundant from Easthouses Colliery, which has now closed. He has had to have a lung removed, and is now too ill to work. After 40 years in the industry, he has landed on the scrap heap, and by some quirk he does not even get any concessionary coal. That is a scandalous reward for a man who helped to produce these black diamonds which, as the nation knows from the events of recent weeks, it cannot do without. No wonder the families of miners at times ask whether there is any justice.
We welcome the improvements of the 1972 scheme, but we must ask ourselves whether, when we talk of voluntary redundancy and early retirement, we are talking in fact of a process of premature unemployment, for the rest of a man's life, in the full knowledge that he will not have any adequate pension or other financial provision for the rest of his natural life.
Again, I am not making an assertion. I am relating the rather pathetic facts of life which hon. Members read in their correspondence. I hope that the Minister will have another look at the case made by the N.U.M. on this vitally important point. Workpeople think that it is a scant reward for men who broke the back of the Nazi armies in the Second World War, who, by their industrial contribution, made this country a foremost industrial nation. We will certainly not oppose the order, but we shall not rest content until such anomalies as I have described are removed.

11.23 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason: First, I must acknowledge that the Government have been co-operative and helpful in continuing that part of the Coal Industry Act which affects coal miners over 55 who lose their jobs through pit closures. Second, we must acknowledge the skill of the National Union of Mineworkers


negotiators, who, over a protracted period, have been presenting this case—particularly Mr. Buick, one of the back room boys of the union, who was largely responsible for its total presentation—and also of my hon. Friends, who, during the Committee stage of the Coal Industry Act, 1971, made many of the suggestions which have been incorporated in the order.
There are about 13 changes from the 1968 scheme. I will not go through them all, but there are five main improvements. First, the annual cost of living increase, a big improvement, is fair and right. Second, the increases in the special hardship allowance and the workmen's compensation benefits are now not to be offset against the miners' basic benefits. That too is a good improvement.
Third, earnings for part-time employment have been increased from £3 to £6 before the miner's basic is affected—providing that they can find part-time employment in the development areas, where unemployment is rife. Fourth, the tied house anomaly is removed. That is, to qualify for the rent allowance, he was tied to the house, especially the N.C.B. house, in which he was living when made redundant. Fifth, days absent from home are now to count in days only, so that a week's unemployment benefit is not lost if he is affected on only one day. Those appear to me to be the five outstanding points in the improvements in the order.
The original scheme which we brought forward in 1968 was hurried and there were many anomalies. Indeed, it was not then, and it is still not, the right answer. But, based on what I thought at the time was humanity—we foresaw many pit closures, especially in development areas where it is difficult to introduce quickly alternative employment—we hurriedly introduced the over-55 scheme to try to alleviate the distress and suffering there were to be among many miners.
When a pit closes, it can mean unemployment for a thousand men at a time. In areas of high unemployment and with the difficulties of introducing new industries into those areas, to find jobs for a thousand men at a time is an almost insurmountable problem. Thousands of men over 55 have already been involved. It has brought many problems in its

train. My fear is that the over-55 block of redundant mineworkers is fast becoming a lost work force to the nation. They are all practically permanently retired. We all know that first there is a period of easement, then a fall in benefits, and then relatively no hope of work. Allied with the Government's dismal failure on the economic and industrial front, with a million unemployed, these men are now being cast upon the industrial scrap heap. I warn the Government that these men must not be forgotten. I only hope that the hon. Gentleman, apart from the order, even in winding up may be able to give them some hope.
In trying to help, I make three suggestions. First, more pits will still close in areas of high unemployment through exhaustion of seams, geological difficulties, perhaps because of lost markets through the last seven weeks, and especially because of Government policy. As has already been announced, they will step up open cast coal mining, import more coal and oil and possibly convert power stations from coal to oil. I hope that at least the hon. Gentleman can make an early announcement that the order, or an improved version of it, will continue well beyond March, 1974.
Second, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider removing the three-year limit. For example, a man 55 years of age affected by a pit closure and declared redundant receives his benefits for three years. At 58 years of age, in cost of our towns and development areas which have been mono-economies dependent on coal for many years, there is no hope of work. Apart from the seven years' production per man lost to the nation, this man becomes lifeless, spiritless. He loses pride in himself. What is more, he becomes a ghost of a man. We are creating now hosts of ghosts in the old mining towns.
My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) mentioned the national figure. Those already involved in the scheme number 12,330. Only 576 have so far found a job. In the Barnsley area, which has been mainly a mono-economy for many years, in which 9 per cent. of the insured population—totalling 6,525—is unemployed, the figure for male unemployment, including temporarily stopped, is 12 per cent. or 4,862. That is a frighteningly depressing figure. But in my town 477 men are involved in the


over-55 scheme. Eighty eight have already been phased out. Having had three years of their benefits they are down to supplementary benefit and only one man has so far found work. There is little hope that under present Government policies any of the others will do so. That is the trouble. We are creating hosts of ghosts in the old mining towns.
My third suggestion is the most important of all. I hope the Government will now seriously consider phasing out the over-55 scheme and introducing sretirement at 60 for coal miners. Retirement at 60 has been our goal for many years. I will explain how it can be done. We have to recognise that there is hardly any hope of jobs for these men in other areas. They have been miners all their lives. They need retraining before they can take on other work but they are in areas of very high unemployment. In this industry 765 miners are killed or die of industrial disease in any year. More than 400 contract pneumoconiosis every year and become diseased for life. Nearly 600 are seriously maimed and 82,000 slightly injured a year. Forty thousand ex-miners receive pneumoconiosis benefits. What a toll that is of life and yet much of this could be avoided it we established retirement at 60. I hope the Minister can institute a study, therefore, of the costs of continuing the over-55 scheme compared with retirement at age 60. We need a total sum appraisal of the financial benefits, considering up to 90 per cent. take-home pay for all those miners who will be affected by pit closures, considering all the unemployment benefits, the various supplementals, loss of productive capacity to the nation of the thousands of men over 55 years of age—all that compared to retirement at 60.
The financial cost, the saving of life and the limiting of industrial disease would mean that retirement at 60 would be the cheapest and best for all concerned. This problem will exist for many years and I hope the Minister will treat that final suggestion as of paramount importance. He should establish the study and let us know the outcome.

11.34 p.m.

Mr. Joseph Harper: Like my hon. Friends who have already spoken I warmly welcome the order.

There are many changes between this order and the order made in 1968, which was too hastily drawn up. No time was given to the detail of it. That point has been made by many of my hon. Friends from mining constituencies over the years, in Questions and speeches. Many of the gaps in the 1968 order have now been plugged. Furthermore, that order did not carry out the principle of 90 per cent. take-home pay. Many of the recipients have been given 90 per cent. in the first year but have never reached it in the second and third years that the order had to run.
On Second Reading of the Coal Industry Bill, 1971, Labour Members gave reasons why the order should be continued. We were rather worried whether or not it would be continued after a change of Government. On Report, last February we listed the necessary improvements. In speaking to an Amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Concannon), we pointed out that the order worked in such a way that after the first 28 weeks the pay deteriorated, tax accounting for much of that deterioriation in the second and third years. I should like the Minister to clarify the position. I have a feeling that this has been accounted for in the basic element the Coal Board has to pay during the period of the order, to take account of tax, so that over the three years as a whole those who are unfortunate enough to be made redundant receive an average of 90 per cent. take-home pay.
We realise that any further increase in unemployment benefit cannot be offset, because if it were not offset some members could take home more than 100 per cent. of the take-home pay. Therefore, although we should have liked to see that in the order we understand why it has been left out.
But we are pleased to see that future increases in special hardship allowance and increases in workmen's compensation will not be offset. In other words, our members will receive the benefit of any such increases. Even full workmen's compensation is taken account of. Another feature of the order as compared with the previous order is that pre-nationalisation service will help people to come into benefit. In fact, a break in continuity of service will be allowed for.
When giving evidence to the Wilberforce Court of Inquiry, the Coal Board said that by 1980 we should need another 100 million tons of coal equivalent extra power, and that coal should retain its 140 million tons share of the market. It is all right projecting into the future, but we had a basinful of that in the 1967 White Paper, which has been proved very wrong in several respects. But if the Board is correct in its projection of 140 million tons, then, provided no coal is imported—and I hope that when we get over the crisis the Government will stop importing coal—there will not be many redundancies. Although this order is much better than the previous one, it would be better still if no one were ever made redundant. The order is only a long-stop.
I support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) said about the pensions scheme. It is much better, as Wilberforce pointed out, that spensions should be reviewed and that we should try to get a decent livingpension for our people when they reach 60, so that everyone in the industry will be able to retire by the age of 60 on a pension that he can live on.
I fully support the order. It will be a relief to the Minister to know that we shall not divide the House against it.

11.39 p.m.

Mr. Adam Hunter: I do not want to say very much, because most of what needs to be said has been covered by my hon. Friend the Member of Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), who made an excellent job of his first speech from the Dispatch Box at very short notice. I could go on for a long time pinpointing criticism of many of the changes enacted in the order, but as so many of my hon. Friends wish to speak I shall confine myself to one—the question of the cost of living annual increase. We are thankful for the scheme, but it is not very generous. I will give an example.
I had occasion to write to the hon. Gentleman about a constituent who had become redundant about two and a half years ago. Since becoming redundant, he had found that an increase of £3 a week had been given to the miners in his grade, and he felt that he should have got some benefit from that because,

had he continued in work, his earnings would have gone up by £3 a week. But under this scheme he was not going to benefit in his take-home pay. The reply sent by the hon. Gentleman said:
When Mr. Hamill was made redundant his pre-redundancy earnings of £14·41 per week made him eligible for benefit of £11·15 per week (including unemployment benefit during the first year).
This means that Mr. Hamill was getting from the Government, in addition to unemployment benefit, the sum of only £3·85. I do not think anyone could call that generous. It was of great help, but this man would not have been very much worse off had he simply got unemployment benefit, long-term allowances from supplementary benefit, and an allowance for rent and rates. He was not better off at 60 years of age. The letter went on:
Unemployment benefit was from £7·30 to £8·10 in November 1969 and under the Scheme Mr. Hamill has benefited from that increase. Unemployment benefit will again be increased next September and the total of his benefit will then be s£13·55. Thus, you will see that the Scheme has worked so as to give him not a static income but an increase of £2·40 in a little over two years.
I fear that that means that what Mr. Hamill enjoyed during his period of redundancy others will no longer enjoy, arising from an increase in unemployment benefit after April, 1973. Later in the letter the hon. Gentleman pointed out that Mr. Hamill was entitled to a rent allowance. It seemed that most people locally were ignorant of that, because although Mr. Hamill took the letter to the local office of the National Coal Board it refused to grant him rent allowance because he had had his rent increased under the N.C.B. scheme. I had to write to the Chairman of the Board and get him to confirm what the hon. Gentleman had said. So Mr. Hamill at least is grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention.
The duration period should be extended. This man was made redundant at the age of 60. Redundancy payments will end in July, and he will still have two years to go before reaching retirement age. That means that his income from July will be depressed to near poverty level. He will be entirely dependent on supplementary benefit. I ask the Minister to think again and try to extend the duration period.

11.45 p.m.

Mr. Fred Evans: The coal industry is treated as a total industry, and if a man becomes redundant he can be moved from one colliery to another—in theory, from Wales to Scotland. If he were an industrial manufacturing worker in a factory and were made redundant he could draw his redundancy pay and walk up the road in the Midlands—that may not be true under the present Government, but it was under the Labour Government—and get another job. The mining industry is one of the toughest that there is. The latest tragedy took place only recently at Cynheidre, when three men fell down the pit shaft. Countless friends of mine have been made redundant at one colliery and sent to another on the jeopardy list. That colliery has then been closed, and they have been moved on. Some incipient pneumonconiotics or incipient silicotics are ordered around the country. They have to travel many hours a day leaving collieries to which they have become attached. They can get redundancy pay only when they have been moved three or four times. Surely the miner is entitled to the same treatment as the worker in manufacturing industry.
The miner is shoved around from pit to pit. In the end this Government will destroy what they claim they stand for and rob these men of hope. When they do that the Prime Minister can certainly go on television and talk about the real danger that exists in a system so savage as to rob men of hope. Some reasonable and generous elements are involved in the order, but in treating those in nationalised industries differently from those in the private sector the Government are making the same mistake as when they tried to force an incomes policy on the public sector and not on the private sector.

11.50 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Swain: I must first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), who has made a magnificent maiden speech from the Dispatch Box and given a very clear analysis of the order. If no other hon. Member had spoken tonight the Under-Secretary would have had more than enough to do in the time available to him to deal

with the points made so ably by my hon. Friend.
I have three main criticisms of the order. However, before coming to them, I want to illustrate how those engaged in the mining industry, instead of going from zero to infinity in their wage-earning capacity, unfortunately go from zero right over the scale and back to zero. One of the most regrettable features in the past few years has been the way in which the zero at the latter end of men s working years has become more telescoped with the zero at the beginning. By that, I mean that we have begun to see men being registered as pneumoconiotics at the early age of 25, proving beyond doubt that dust hazards in the industry are affecting men at a much earlier age. As a consequence, a man reaching the age of 50 is almost beyond earning a reasonably high wage in a pit.
Hon. Members on this side of the House hoped that the Minister would consider this point seriously. It was made cogently when we considered the Coal Industry Bill in Committee. We proposed that the age should be brought down from 55 to 50, bearing in mind the point that I have just made, which is only one of many. For example, the reflexes of men become slower because of the more difficult conditions in which they are working, so they become more accident-prone. We on this side still believe that the age should be made 50, thus making the end-product longer.
In 1967, we in the miners' group argued from the benches opposite that the date for the expiration of the order that we were considering then should be extended to 1975. I am of the same view today. I believe that this order should be extended. Although I support my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) 100 per cent. about retirement at 60, I agree with Jim sGriffiths that miners should be able to retire on adequate pensions at 60. However, that does not seem to be in the offing yet. At the moment, we have what is more of less a compulsory retirement scheme at 58. Assuming that a man is redundant at 55 and obtains his three years' benefits then, because of disability in one way or other, he is compulsorily retired at 58. This amounts to a retirement age two years earlier than usual without the attendant benefits. This situation should


be examined seriously by the Government.
I appreciate that the Labour Government's scheme was drawn up in a hurry; it was an expedient, and filled the bill at the time. But the Government should have realised the mistakes which were then made and, on humanitarian grounds, should have corrected them in these provisions.
The Housing Finance Bill, which is in Committee upstairs, will inevitably affect those people who suffer early retirement or redundancy. Rent allowance will be given to married men, but single men who rent Coal Board houses may well find themselves in difficulties since the board has made applications for fair rents to be fixed. In my constituency rents which, in old money, used to be 35 shilling per week, have risen to £4·50. The single man will suffer considerable hardship and in terms of rent, if nothing else, should be treated on a par with the married man.
During the debates in 1968 we sat up until eight o'clock in the morning, and one of the major matters we discussed was whether men who served on local authorities should qualify for redundancy payments, and whether the time that they had lost should be taken into account. The Labour Government saw fit to amend the legislation to bring such lost time into the benefit scheme. The provisions of the Local Government Bill will bring about a fundamental change in the situation. The wider powers given to counties will take up more and more time of people who serve on local authorities, and this trend will continue over the years.
When it is pointed out that 10 years ago there were 14 pits in my constituency and that that number has now declined to four, it can be seen what a rapid decline has taken place in the industry; the number of men employed in the industry has fallen from 14,000 to 4,500. Many of those people who undertake service in the local authority will lose money in so doing. Therefore, I ask the Minister to examine this matter seriously and to say why nothing is done about it in terms of the present order. If nothing can be done on this occasion, I hope that in future we shall have an order which will allow those serving on local authorities to qualify for redundancy payments.

11.58 p.m.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: I hope that the Minister will take note of the suggestion in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Swain) that those who serve on local authorities should be considered when retirement benefits are being assessed. It is disgraceful when somebody who has served for 35 or 40 years in the mining industry is left for up to seven years with no benefits other than unemployment benefit. I have known men who have given their lives to the industry and who, having been declared redundant at 55, have had no opportunity to find work in the area. That does not happen in any other industry. The Minister knows that in many industries, when a person has served 35 or 40 years he qualifies for a very good pension right to the end of his life.
In the coal mining industry—the most arduous and dangerous in this country—the miners are treated as though they can find other work after the age of 58. In my area, where there is 10 per cent. unemployment or more, what hope is there for a man aged 58 or over to find work? There is no hope whatsoever. Even though the Labour Government's scheme was appreciated at the time, it fell far below what the men in the industry deserved.
This Government have to realise—and they have increased unemployment from 600,000 to over 1 million—that it is almost impossible for a person to get a job when he is made redundant in the mining industry. Does that mean throwing the men on the scrapheap at the age of 58? It has been said that it might happen at 50. Does that mean 54, or 55, or 56? It is disgraceful that any society should accept that kind of decision against people who are still capable of doing a job of work. I hope that the Government will realise that.
I am worried about the future of miners in a contracting industry. What sort of society are we going to be living in—a society that believes that when men reach the age of 55, 56 or 57 they should be thrown on the scrapheap, on unemployment benefit that is far below the standard of living that the Government say they believe in? I hope that the Minister will realise this because the greatest worry to the mining industry now


is what is going to happen to those who are working in the industry, as well as those who have been made to leave it.
The benefits that miners used to receive, but will no longer receive, are factors that must also be taken into account. This Government will be condemned unless they are more generous to the miners who have been in this industry for their whole working lives. No other industry treats its employees like the Government are going to treat the miners.
I appeal to the Minister to have another look at the order and make certain that it will ensure more generous treatment to the miners than they are receiving at present.

12.5 a.m.

Mr. James Sillars: I understand that the Minister would like to speak again at a quarter-past Twelve. I shall ensure that he has plenty of time to reply to the debate.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Alex Eadie) on his debut at the Dispatch Box. I used to be his election agent. I was not terribly successful, because I did not get him into Parliament. However, all election agents like to see their candidates progress, and this is a particularly good night for me, having watched my hon. Friend at the Dispatch Box.
I do not want to appear churlish in saying that although the order is obviously a humanitarian Measure, on a fair number of occasions it is likely to lead to less than a humanitarian outcome in the lives of various individuals in the mining communities.
Some hon. Members have referred to miners made redundant at the age of 55 and above. Bluntly, the position is that a man who has been made redundant at the age of 55 finds himself, at the age of 58—certainly in Ayrshire, which I know best—in a fairly hopeless situation in terms of finding employment. At the moment Ayrshire, in which men from the Ayrshire coalfield must seek further employment, has about 6,500 males unemployed and fewer than 200 male vacancies. It is not unusual for a man who has been made redundant in the mines at the age of 55 or over to be told by any would-be employer that he is far

too old to be taken on, especially in these circumstances. That is one problem facing the man over 55 years of age.
Another problem, mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), concerns men who have a disease contracted in the mining industry. After an initial period in which they have enjoyed the fresh air, perhaps for the first time for many years, they suddenly come up against the crunch of unemployment, and something dies within them. After miners are loaded with disease to a certain point and the human machine stops working constantly, it seems that it starts to die within and cannot be regenerated.
It is very sad to meet men made redundant under the 1968 scheme, for example, who have started to lose hope of ever regaining what they regard as total manhood, measured by their ability to earn a living. In those circumstances I view the order with mixed feelings.
If redundancy is inevitable—obviously, when pits meet the point of exhaustion some redundancy is inevitable—I suppose it is better that money should be made available. I welcome wholeheartedly the provision for additional benefits being paid to redundant miners—benefits which arise from the pressure by the Labour Party, immediately after the 1970 election, for the Coal Industry Act from which the order arises.
Listening to the Minister introducing the order, one of my keenest disappointments was that he rejected the crucial claim by the N.U.M. that the redundancy payments scheme should continue until retirement age. Although he has met a number of peripheral factors, the crucial one has been rejected. I wonder what would have happened if the N.U.M. had added that to some of the points negotiated in Downing Street on the evening that the Wilberforce Report was considered.
One reason that I view the order with mixed feelings is the knowledge I have that however good a redundancy scheme we make, if we confine it to a three-year period it will only defer the evil day when a man finally has to admit to himself, to his neighbours and to the community in which he lives that he is on the labour scrapheap for the remainder of what is normally regarded as his working life The redundancy scheme merely lulls men


into taking early unemployment, and not early retirement.
I doubt very much whether this is the best way in which we can meet the needs of those men who are made redundant in the mining community.
It should not be beyond the wit of any Government to promote special retraining schemes and make special efforts to place these men in employment. They are the victims of special circumstances, and should be considered a special case and given special treatment by the Government. If, because of the employment situation, the Government cannot do this, they are morally bound to accept the point made by the N.U.M. that the scheme should continue until the point of retirement. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) suggested that the mining industry is so special a case that the retirement age for miners should be 60. In principle, I think, we all agree with that, certainly on this side of the House.
Many miners still in employment between the ages of 60 and 65 use that time, when their family responsibilities have been reduced, to build up their home, acquire carpets and furniture and set themselves up so that they have no capital outlay after retirement at 65. Miners want the assurance, if we campaign for retirement at 60, that the present poverty level pensions will be raised to give them a more substantial rate of income. They want a pension on which they can lead a full and decent life. Dignity is very important to miners and mining communities.

12.14 a.m.

Mr. Ridley: By leave of the House, I will reply to the points which have been raised. I add my congratulations to those extended to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) who has found himself for the first time on what might be called the coal face of the House of Commons. I assure him that there is a lot of hard digging to be done from it, and I wish him all success. I express my pleasure at the welcome given by the Opposition to the many improvements embodied in the scheme. It is right to acknowledge that it was a comprehensive and reasonable memorandum from the N.U.M. which persuaded us that it was right to make these changes. Representations had also been made to us by hon. Gentlemen about defects in the

scheme. Equally, I hope they will acknowledge that we have done our best to meet all these points and that this is reflected in the order.
I will deal with questions asked and points raised and then turn to what was perhaps the major theme of the debate—the suggestion that the scheme should have gone further in various ways. I was asked about ex-gratia payments by the hon. Member for Midlothian. Retrospective application of concessions, such as retention of rent allowance to a man on the present scheme, applies only after March, 1972.
We told the N.U.M.—I am glad of this chance to put it on the record—that we would be ready to give ex-gratia consideration to any individual cases of a similar kind where the change in question happened before March, 1972, if hardship was caused. If there are any special cases in which hardship has been caused and they are put forward to the Government or the National Coal Board, they will be considered very fully.
The hon. Member quoted figures concerning the proportion of miners who had found jobs after redundancy. I cannot confirm or deny those figures tonight but I think everybody would wish to give the greatest possible incentive for them to find extra employment. We do not want early retirement for the sake of early retirement. It would be far preferable if there were incentives to find another job. That, I think, is built into the scheme that is now before the House.
The right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) asked why we did not go beyond March, 1974. I think events have proved that it is wiser to take the scheme for a short period only. If the present scheme ran for another three or four years from now, it would not be possible to make the improvements which are built into this scheme. In due course, therefore, it might well be possible to make further improvements and changes which correct anomalies, and that would be to the advantage of all concerned. To tie ourselves to too long a period, however, seems to me to be too much of a mortgage of future policy. Indeed, the union itself might well feel that it would like to have another opportunity to assess the effect of the scheme in a couple of years' time and make further representations. I assure the House, however that


there is no intention of terminating the scheme in March, 1974, or that it should come to an end and there would be nothing to replace it. That is not at all the intention.
The right hon. Gentleman wondered what would be the cost of a different scheme. I shall come to this presently, but it might help the House to know that under all the schemes to date 37,000 people have benefited at a total cost of £30 million. That might be useful information to hon. Members.
The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper) asked whether 90 per cent. of earnings was ever reached and whether the tax treatment was consistent with that target. What happens is that the effect of taxation falls fairly heavily in the second and third years of the scheme and hardly touches the first year. That is why the initial year is paid at 95 per cent. of previous earnings but the figure falls later. This is in order to give the recipient an average of 90 per cent. overall, including his taxation liabilities, over the three-year period. I know that this is complicated, and it must seem very complicated to the recipient, but the intention, and I think the effect, is to pay 90 per cent. over the three-year period. That is what we hope to consider.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline Burghs (Mr. Adam Hunter) asked whether unemployment benefit increases would continue to be paid. The answer is "Yes". If there are increases in unemployment benefit, they will of course immediately reflect themselves in the unemployment benefit part of the total payment. The basic scheme part, which is the other part of the basic payment, will also be reviewed annually, so that both parts will be reviewed to make sure that they take account of increases in the cost of living.
The principle applying throughout this scheme—and it has now been enforced by the order—is that the annual increase is related to increases in the cost of living or such increases in State benefits as the Government of the day may determine, and that, therefore, whatever rate of earnings applies at the time of retirement will be continued in real terms for the whole period of the scheme. That, I hope, will be effected by the changes proposed in the order.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) implied that miners were in some way less well treated than other professions or trades. This is not arguable, because no other profession has a redundancy scheme of this sort. I take the point that when a man is changing from pit to pit redundancy pay is not drawable, but of course it is a great advantage that there is a single employer who can offer alternative work at other pits. This is one reason why the party opposite favoured this form of nationalisation—that there was a single, monolithic employer which could provide the most opportunities and the best career structure and employment earnings for those whom it employed.
Coupled with the fact that this scheme is unique to this industry, to have a scheme of this sort makes it difficult to say that mining is treated differently from other industries—unless one were to say that in some ways it receives advantages over other trades and professions.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Swain), talked about rents. National Coal Board tenants, whether married or single, will get the same rent allowance, so that they benefit that way. Equally, although it is not for me to talk of such matters, I believe that the hon. Member will find that, under the Bill to which he referred, rebates are offered for certain levels of income. I cannot say what they are, because I have not studied the details closely at this stage, but this must be taken into account in assessing the effect of any increases in rents on tenants of N.C.B. houses.
I confirm to the hon. Member and to the hon. Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Edwin Wainwright) that time spent in working on local authorities or in the public service, or in magistrates' courts, and so on, will count towards the computation of the total number of days in the last year's service. I said that in opening the debate, and I confirm it now It does not appear in the order because it can be effected by administrative rather than legal action.
Some hon. Members argued that we should reduce the age to 50, others that we should extend the duration of the scheme to 65, whatever the age of redundancy, and yet others that we should introduce a pension age of 60 for all


miners. Although I appreciate the argument that we are dealing with people with difficult health and aging problems, special problems at work. There are due to the nature of this work, these are not the only people who suffer from many other employments in which industrial diseases and other hazards put men in a difficult position before retirement age.
There is for miners this special scheme, far in advance of that provided in any other industry. It is far better than is provided by any other country for their coal miners. It has been improved by the order, and obviously the total cost is a factor which the Government have to bear in mind. I strongly reject the suggestion that we should reduce the starting age to 50, because to do that would merely put off the time when the redundant miner has to seek a new job.

It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted business).

Question agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Redundant Mineworkers (Payments Scheme) Order 1972, a draft of which was laid before this House on 1st February, be approved.

Orders of the Day — SUPERANNUATION BILL

Lords Amendments considered.

Clause 21

EMPLOYEES OF BRITISH AIRWAYS BOARD, BRITISH EUROPEAN AIRWAYS CORPORATION, BRITISH OVERSEAS AIRWAYS CORPORATION, ETC.

Lords Amendment: No. 1 in page 21, line 4, after "was" insert
or was treated for those purposes as being

12.25 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Howell): I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
Like two of the three others on the Order Paper, the Amendment is a purely technical one and was expanded on in

some detail by my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal in another place. Unless the House wishes it otherwise, I merely formally move the Amendment.

Question put and agreed to. [Special Entry.]

New Clause A

PENSION INCREASES

Lords Amendment: No. 2, in page 23, line 23, at end insert new Clause A—
A.—(1) For subsections (1) to (4) of section 2 of the Pensions (Increase) Act 1971 (which provides for the future review of official pensions and payment of increases) there shall be substituted the following subsections:—
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, the Minister for the Civil Service, as soon as may be after 30th June in the year 1972, and every year thereafter, shall review the rates of official pensions against any rise there may have been in the cost of living during the review period, that is to say—

(a) the period of fifteen months ending with 30th June 1972 ("the first review period"); or
(b) the period of twelve months ending with 30th June in the year 1973 and every year thereafter;
and if it is found that in the review period the cost of living has risen by two per cent. or more, then the Minister shall by order provide that the annual rate of an official pension may, if a qualifying condition is satisfied, be increased in accordance with the order in respect of any period beginning on or after 1st December next following the review period.
(2) Subject to subsection (3) below, the increases to be provided for by an order under this section shall be as follows:—

(a) for pensions beginning on or before the first day of the review period the increase shall be in the proportion (to the nearest one-tenth of one per cent.) in which the cost of living has risen during the review period; and
(b) for pensions beginning—

(i) in the half year following that day; or
(ii) in the next succeeding half year ending, in the case of the first review period, with 1st April 1972 and, in the case of any other review period, with the day after the end of that period; or
(iii) in the three months ending with 1st July 1972,
the increases shall be in the proportion (to the nearest one-tenth of one per cent.) in which the cost of living is found to have risen between the basis


period for that half year or that period of three months, as the case may be, and the end of the review period, if the cost of living in the basis period is taken as the mean of the monthly figures.
(2A) For purposes of subsection (2)(b) above—

(a) the basis period for any half year is the six months ending with the first month of the half year or, if the cost of living is lower in the half year than in those six months, is the half year itself;
(b) the basis period for the period of three months specified in sub-paragraph (iii) is the period of three months ending with 1st February 1972 or, if the cost of living is lower in the period so specified, is that period.
(3) Where the rise referred to in subsection (2)(b) above is less for any half year than two per cent., there shall only be an increase for pensions beginning in that half year if there is one for pensions beginning in a later half year, and the increase (if there is one) shall be two per cent.; but where this subsection prevents there being an increase for pensions beginning in any half year, then the order made in respect of the next review period shall for those pensions authorise, instead of an increase calculated in accordance with subsection (2)(a) above, such increase as would result if that prevented by this subsection had been made and were followed by one calculated in accordance with subsection (2)(a) by reference to the rate as so increased.
(4) Where on any review under this section it is not found that the cost of living has risen by two per cent. or more in the review period, the review in the next year shall be for the same review period extended by twelve months; and if it is found that the cost of living has risen by two per cent. or more in the (extended) review period, the provisions of this section shall apply subject to the modification that for subsection (2)(b)(ii) and (iii) there shall be substituted the following:—
'(ii) in any of the succeeding half years up to that ending with the day after the end of the review period'.
(2) For subsection (3) of section 9 of the said Act of 1971 (which relates to gratuities and lump sums) there shall be substituted the following subsection:—
(3) In respect of any lump sum or instalment of a lump sum which becomes payable after the day following the last day of a review period but before 1st December next following the review period there may be paid by virtue of section 2 above the same increase as if it became payable on that date.
(3) After subsection (4) of the said section 9 there shall be inserted the following subsection:—
(4A) Subsection (4) above shall have affect in relation to the first review period

as if the period of three months ending with 1st July 1972 were a half year ending with that date.

Read a Second time.

Mr. David Howell: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
The Amendment, which of the four, perhaps, is the one substantial Amendment, is to insert new Clause A. The Clause gives effect to the Government's decision, announced in the House by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services on 16th December, to review public service pensions every year instead of every two years. Although the Clause may look grimly complex, it merely alters the existing procedure for review in three main respects.
Briefly, these are, first, to make the reviews annually instead of biennially; second, to provide for the transition from a 1st September to a 1st December payment date, and the fact that the present review period will, therefore, not consist of an exact number of half years; and third, to reduce from 4 per cent. to 2 per cent. the amount, sometimes called the "trigger", by which the cost of living must have risen during the relevant period for an increase to be payable.
That is the main purpose of this rather complex looking Clause, which is put forward as an alternative to a whole string of unintelligible Amendments which would otherwise have had to have been brought forward to make these changes.
Although it does not arise directly out of the Amendment—as the necessary powers are already contained in Section 3(8) of the 1971 Act—I remind the House that we shall also be giving effect, from 1st December, 1972, to our undertaking to reduce from 60 to 55 the age at which public service pensioners normally qualify for increases under the Act.
Those are the main purposes of the new Clause.

12.29 a.m.

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: At this hour and with the small attendance, I shall comment only briefly on this extremely important Amendment. It means so much to so many that perhaps the House has not appreciated from the language, which takes a little unravelling, how much


it means. I take this opportunity of saying how appreciative those of us who are close students of this subject are of what the Government are doing and how glad we are that my hon. Friend has come into Macedonia to help us.
On annual reviews, the Government are simply matching the announcement already made as a matter of general policy. I should like to comment on the use of the cost of living as an index. Obviously those who look to an expansion in our economy will hope that in due course we shall move away from the cost of living as an index to something more closely related to the actual progress of the economy, so that those who have retired and who contributed to the economy in their working lives are not left behind as we all move forward. I think it was Harold Macmillan who said that the pensioners brought us to where we are. We must take them along with us to where we are going, and in that respect the cost of living as the index is not entirely satisfactory.
The other question which needs examining in the context of longer-term considerations on the whole matter of the relationship between retired people and those at work is whether the cost of living is the right index for a larger group than a family of one or two people. Normally in dealing with pensioners the question of a man with family responsibilities, including the raising of children, does not arise. But the point needs reiterating on every possible opportunity that the cost of living increase is a rather insensitive guide to the actual cost of a family, and where a pensioner has more than one dependant there is the possibility that over the passage of time, if inflation continues as it has in the past year or two, a problem will arise which will need further consideration, namely how to deal with a person who is trying to manage the cost of living index on behalf of several people at a time.
Having made these small points at this highly significant hour, I should like once again to congratulate the Under-Secretary and say that he is setting a pace which it is going to be extremely difficult for private schemes to match.

Question put and agreed to [Special Entry].

Remaining Lords Amendments agreed to [One with Special Entry].

HOUSING FINANCE [MONEY] [No. 2]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to introduce a new system of housing subsidies for housing authorities, to provide for rent rebate and rent allowance schemes administered by housing authorities, to amend the law about rents of dwellings and in particular those subject to the Rent Act 1968 or provided by housing authorities, and to make other provision as to housing finance, it is expedient to authorise payments out of money provided by Parliament as follows:—

1. A subsidy for the provision of hostel accommodation by local authorities, or other bodies or authorities.
2. Housing subsidies for housing associations or the Housing Corporation as set out below.

A. Special residual subsidy, that is a reducing sum based on the housing subsidies which would have been receivable but for the proposed repeal of Part I of the Housing Subsidies Act 1967 and section 15 of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1958.
B. New building subsidy, that is 100 per cent. or less of the initial deficit incurred on any new building scheme approved by the Secretary of State.—[Mr. Channon]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adojurn.—[Mr Clegg.]

Orders of the Day — Mr. GERALDUS GREEN

12.33 a.m.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: I wish to raise this morning the case of the late Mr. Geraldus Green, who was a constituent of mine living at Staunton near Coleford in the County of Gloucestershire, and who died in Standish Hospital on 9th December, 1971. I wish to make it absolutely clear from the beginning that there is no criticism of any kind of the hospital and its staff. Indeed, the family of the late Mr. Green can find nothing but praise for the care and attention that was lavished on him during his stay in the hospital.
The burden of my complaint is against the two general practitioners who treated Mr. Green before his entry into Standish Hospital. I charge them with culpable negligence and of being incompetent. The names of the two doctors concerned are Dr. Wallis and Dr. Hodson.
For some time I had had a lot of complaints about the medical services in Coleford and, as the Minister well knows, in particular about Dr. Hodson, who is a complete law unto himself. A large number of his patients are so afraid of him that they have now got to the point of not calling him out even when they are seriously ill. They know from bitter experience that if they protest against what they consider to be his callous treatment of them they will be struck off the list. It might be argued that they can always get another doctor, but there is only one practice in Coleford, of which Dr. Hodson is one of the three partners, The other doctor concerned in the case, Dr. Wallis, is also a partner. It is essential to bear in mind the attitude of the doctors and the state of mind that has been created among the patients in Coleford in relation to the specific case of Mr. Green.
Gerry Green lived in my village and was a personal friend of mine. He was a really good man. An ex-miner, he was very intelligent and well-read, and had a philosophical turn of mind. He brought up six children, five boys and a girl. He had 45 years' married life. He brought his family up as a very nice family unit. But he was not a man who devoted his entire efforts to his own family. He devoted a great deal of his time to the service of the community. He was for

many years a member of the parish council, a chairman of the parish council, a member of the rural district council and a trustee of the only local charity. He was a man who gave service to the community and was entitled to service when he required it, and that service was not forthcoming. I believe that had it been forthcoming Gerry Green would be alive today and we should not be having this debate.
He was taken ill on 22nd October. His brother called at my house on Saturday, 23rd October, asking me to go to see him as he was very ill and had refused to have a doctor. When I saw him I asked him whether he had sent to the doctor. He replied—I paraphrase what he said, "No. You know what Hodson is like. He will not come, and if he does there is only trouble." In a subsequent conversation he told me that he was bothered because his wife was not too well—she has not been too well for a long time—and he wanted to safeguard her position should he need to send for Hodson for her. It is a tragic situation for a man to be in, to be sick himself and not want to send for the doctor because of the atmosphere created by Hodson against his patients. Gerry Green was certainly not a man to see bogys where they did not exist.
I went home immediately and rang Hodson's number. I received an Ansafone message, and consequently rang Dr. Wallis. I told him who I was and asked him to pay a visit to Mr. Green. His first reaction was to argue that Mr. Green would not be as seriously ill as I suggested. When I insisted, he said, "This is a fine time to call me out." That was at about one o'clock at a Saturday lunchtime. If that is a bad time to call him out, how much worse would it be if it were two o'clock in the morning? Anyway, he made a visit. He diagnosed bronchitis, left a prescription and never paid a single visit after that. Nor did he inform Dr. Hodson that he, as stand-in doctor, had treated one of his patients.
I was tied up with work on the Saturday following that weekend and consequently was not able to go to Mr. Green's home until the late Sunday lunchtime. I did not stay long upstairs, where Mr. Green was lying, for to me it was obvious that he was dying. I asked Mrs. Green downstairs when the doctor had paid his


last visit, and she told me that no further visit had taken place since the initial visit. Indeed, she said that Dr. Hodson had refused to attend. I went back home and telephoned his number. I received again an Ansafone message saying that late callers in any case of emergency should ring again at 2.30 p.m.
I do not want to exaggerate but I think I had to wait a little over 20 minutes, as it was close to 2 p.m. when I made that call. In any case, let us just imagine the significance of that 20 minutes in a case of emergency. It could well have been a matter of life and death. I believe that this Ansafone system when a doctor is on stand-by is a breach of his terms of practice. I rang again at 2.30 p.m. and as a result of what I said to the doctor he paid a visit to Mr. Green, who was taken to Standish Hospital on the following Tuesday on the instructions of Dr. Hodson.
I return now to the refusal of Dr. Hodson to pay his visit. One of Mr. Green's sons, Michael, has, as the Minister knows, since I told him privately, a very responsible position which for good reasons I do not want to refer to in the House. But it is a position of such a nature that he would not be likely to panic or become hysterical.
On Saturday, 30th October, Michael Green, who is married and lives some miles away, called to see his father and was shocked by his condition. He telephoned Dr. Hodson, explaining who he was and saying that his father was seriously ill. He asked him to visit him. Dr. Hodson refused, but said that if Michael attended the surgery he would give him some tablets for his father. Michael attended the surgery and after 20 minutes or so was handed some tablets or capsules by the receptionist. He asked to see the doctor but was told firmly and bluntly, "No." On leaving the surgery, however, he saw the doctor through the hatchway to the dispensary and spoke to him. He again described the condition of his father and implored Dr. Hodson to visit him. He was told bluntly that Dr. Hodson had no knowledge of Dr. Wallis's visit, that in any case Dr. Hodson was not available that weekend, that he was not likely to be available until the following Tuesday and that he would if he could pay a visit on Tuesday, although he could not promise.
The significance of that is that if I had not known Mr. Green's son, and if Mr. Green's brother had not come to me in the first place, no doctor would have attended that man from the initial visit until that Tuesday. It was only because they knew me and because I was prepared to go to the doctor and tell him that he had better come out that he did come out. But an enormous number of my constituents, faced with a similar situation, had no opportunity of seeing me or would not dream of coming to see me about it. It is a pretty nasty situation when a doctor has a responsible person pleading with him to attend to his father but refuses to come out because it does not suit his convenience.
I say that Dr. Wallis was guilty of negligence in his failure to inform Dr. Hodson of the serious nature of Mr. Green's illness and in his failure to say that he had made a visit to one of Dr. Hodson's patients. Both doctors apparently diagnosed bronchitis. It is true that Mr. Green had a very heavy chest condition but he was also spitting what in the circumstances can be described as large quantities of blood. When admitted to Standish his condition was diagnosed as pneumonia which is of course symptomatic of some other condition.
If the doctors had paid the visits which they ought to have done in the first week they would have been able to see that the man had something much worse than bronchitis and would probably have diagnosed pneumonia much sooner. Mr. Green was given oxygen on the way to Standish Hospital and when he arrived it was impossible for tests to be carried out. Only the post-mortem disclosed that he had died from peritonitis due to a perforated carcinoma. It is significant that one of the hospital staff told a member of the family that if Mr. Green had gone into hospital a week earlier they could possibly have pulled him through.
Why did Dr. Hodson send this man to Standish Hospital, which is a specialist chest hospital? He was travelling from Staunton to Standish, passing the Dilke hospital far beyond the two hospitals in Gloucester and he could have sent him to Lydney. He was so incompetent that he assumed that it was bronchitis and sent a dying man on journeys he


need not have undertaken. The death of Mr. Green is a sorry tale of incompetence, indifference and culpable negligence.
The Minister might argue that the proper steps to take in such a case is to ask for a hearing before the Medical Services Committee of the Executive Council. I so advised the Green family. A request for such a hearing was dated 3rd January. Bearing in mind that Mr. Green did not die until 9th December the application was within six weeks of his death, but the bureaucratic mind of the Executive Council fastened on the dates of the visits and the failure to visit, to challenge the right to a hearing. The Secretary of the Executive Council was informed that the man had been in hospital for five weeks and had died. Anyone with the slightest semblance of sympathy for a human being would have accepted that illness as being within the terms of the exceptions under which late applications can be made.
I have tried to handle this case as tactfully as I could: I have seen the Minister to try to get some improvement in the service and I have deliberately avoided publicity, because I did not want further to erode the confidence of the patients in the doctors. I have now reached the stage when I cannot honestly say that I have any confidence in the issue being resolved in that way.
I am beginning to think that I have been at fault in trying to deal with it in this way. Time and again I have advised patients of Dr. Hodson to apply for a hearing to the Executive Council. I have run up against this brick wall of fear. People fear that if they take action against him it will have repercussions against them and their families. It is essential that the Minister should now undertake a complete investigation into the medical services in the Coleford area. I tell the Minister that this is not the last case of death that he will hear of because of this doctor's failure to act. The sooner that a full investigation takes place, the better it will be for everyone concerned.
Mr. Green's case apart, it is essential that people who are patients of this man should have the confidence to be able to bring him out when they are really sick. I do not want people to be for ever at

the door of the doctor's surgery. I do not want to claim any privileges. But, when a person is ill, it is essential that his relatives have the right to insist that the doctor should make a visit, and that the doctor should not argue that it is not convenient for him and put off the visit for five days when he has been told specifically by a responsible person that his patient is virtually dying. If a doctor takes that attitude to a person like the son of Gerry Green, bearing in mind the position that he holds, heaven help the ordinary man or woman who has not the sagacity of Mr. Michael Green.

12.50 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): One of our more rewarding jobs as Members of Parliament is to concern ourselves with the personal problems which crop up for our constituents. I may say that my own experience of the record of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) in this regard has left me with a great respect for his zeal and tenacity.
The circumstances with which we are concerned tonight are extremely distressing and, through the hon. Gentleman, I offer my sympathy and that of the whole House to Mr. Michael Green and the rest of his family on the sad death of his father. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will convey our condolences.
In the course of my remarks I hope to persuade the hon. Gentleman that the door which he first considered, namely, the statutory complaint procedure, is a useful one, and one which will open readily to his touch. I refer to the procedure known as the service committee procedure, established under the National Health Service (Service Committees and Tribunal) Regulations, 1956. I am sure that the best advice I can give the hon. Gentleman is that the events which he has described should be brought within the ambit of this procedure and that the procedure should be allowed to operate.
Perhaps I might elaborate. The procedure exists to facilitate complaints that practitioners have failed to comply with the terms of service which form part of their contract with the local executive council. The committee of the executive


council which carries out such investigations—the service committee—includes both lay and professional members, and a hearing is usually arranged where prima facie grounds of complaint exist in the opinion of the service committee.
Before the hearing, both parties usually present written evidence and at the hearing both parties are normally present and can call witnesses. The service committee reaches a conclusion on whether or not the practitioner was in breach of his terms of service—and if the conclusion is that there was a breach, can recommend sanctions, including the withholding of remuneration.
The service committee's report and recommendations go to the executive council, whose decision is notified to the practitioner, to the person complaining, and to my right hon. Friend. Both parties have a right of appeal to my right hon. Friend against a decision adverse to them. I would only add at this stage that it is, of course, a serious matter for a practitioner to be found in breach of his terms of service.
I should like to turn now to the facts of the complaint. I have explained that my right hon. Friend fulfils an appellate function under the service committee procedure, and as Mr. Michael Green may pursue his complaint under that procedure, I must make it quite clear that it would be wrong if I were to express any view on the merits of the complaint.
On 31st December, 1971, Mr. Green wrote to the Gloucester County and City Executive Council stating that he wished to lodge a formal complaint against the two general practitioners who had attended his father, as he felt that they had failed to comply with their terms of service. Mr. Green's father was taken ill on 22nd October, 1971, and on either 23rd or 24th October, at the initiative of the hon. Gentleman, one of the two doctors attended him. Mr. Green alleges, however, that during the ensuing week no follow-up action was taken by either of the two doctors and that on 30th October, in spite of Mr. Green's several urgent requests, one of them refused to visit his father. The doctor did, however, make a visit on 31st October at the request of the hon. Gentleman, and the patient was admitted to hospital on 2nd November. I am sorry to say that he died on 9th December.
Mr. Green's letter was received in the offices of the Executive Council on 3rd January. The letter was studied to see whether it contained an allegation that either or both of the doctors mentioned in the complaint had failed to comply with their terms of service.
It was noted that there was an allegation that one had refused to visit and treat the patient on 30th October, which would imply a breach of paragraph 7(6) of the terms of service for general medical practitioners. It was also noted that this alleged failure occurred just two months and one day prior to Mr. Green's putting his complaint in writing. The clerk of the executive council wrote to Mr. Green, therefore, to ask him to confirm that his complaint was based on this allegation, and drew Mr. Green's attention to the time limits for making such complaints and the circumstances in which a complaint made outside those time limits may be considered.
The clerk pointed out that Mr. Green's complaint had been made outside the time limits, and in accordance with the regulations he asked Mr. Green to give his reasons for the delay, indicating that without such information the council's medical service committee would be unable to determine what action to take in the matter.
In a letter dated 7th January, Mr. Green replied to the clerk saying that he had placed the matter in the hands of the hon. Gentleman. So far as the service committee procedure is concerned, the matter can be taken no further until Mr. Green gives his reasons for the delay in making his complaint.
I shall return to this matter shortly but, having said that Mr. Green's complaint was not made to the executive council within the time limits described in governing regulations, I think it will be helpful if I say a little more about these limits. Normally a complaint should be made to the executive council within six weeks of the event which gave rise to the complaint. There is a practical reason for this, as the longer the delay between the event complained of and any investigation of it the more difficult it becomes clearly to establish the facts. It is also easier for the complainant to remember the facts, as it is his own case, than for the practitioner who is treating many people every day. Clearly, therefore, there


must be some limit to the time during which practitioners can be asked to account for their actions on a particular occasion.
However, there will inevitably be occasions when, with the best will in the world, a person is unable to make a complaint within this period of six weeks and it would not be right to impose an absolute bar at this point. The regulations provide that the medical service committee of the council may also investigate a complaint against a general practitioner which is made within two months after the event giving rise to it, provided the committee is satisfied that the delay in lodging the complaint is due to illness or other reasonable cause. Furthermore, a complaint which is made outside two months may still be investigated if, in addition to the committee's being satisfied with the reasons for the delay, the consent of the practitioner is obtained, or—failing that—my right hon. Friend consents to an investigation.
Returning to Mr. Green's complaint, the hon. Gentleman wrote to me on 19th January saying that he understood from Mr. Green that the executive council's decision was that his complaint was rejected. I replied to that letter on 10th February, and apart from explaining the time limits as I have just now done again, said:
I should make it clear that the Council have not rejected Mr. Green's complaint
and
… Mr. Green should reply at once to the Clerk of the Executive Council's letter of 5th January and explain the reasons for the delay in lodging his complaint.
Of course I added then, as I have to add now, that executive councils are independent bodies and it is up to the medical service committee of the Gloucester Council to decide whether, if it is satisfied that the complaint was not made within the time limit because of

illness or other reasonable cause, it should go on to seek the consent of the practitioner—or failing that, of my right hon. Friend—to an investigation. But to return to the analogy with which I began, I think the hon. Gentleman will more likely than not find the service committee procedure door will open if he advises Mr. Green to reply to the letter of 5th January.
If the hon. Gentleman is disappointed by this reply I would refer him to some words of his own when he was standing at this Box replying to an Adjournment debate which involved a case where a service committee had gone further than it has in relation to Mr. Green's complaint and decided that delay in making the complaint had not been occasioned by illness or other reasonable cause. Then he said that
The service committee procedure is the statutory method of investigating complaints and the regulations governing the procedure leave the matter to the opinion of the Committee
adding that though his Minister was a sympathetic and understanding person,
the reason for the disappointing reply was solely that he had no power to go outside the regulations".
In conclusion, therefore, I can only repeat that the hon. Gentleman should advise Mr. Green to reply as soon as possible to the executive council's letter of 5th January in order that the statutory procedure for dealing with complaints such as he has made can proceed. As I hope I have made clear, there is no direct action that I or my right hon. Friend can take in this respect, but there is every likelihood that if Mr. Green replies, as he was asked to do, sympathetic consideration will be given to his explanations as to the delay.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute past one o'clock.